deathmtn

The situation at Mountains was bad enough that in 2020 the studio implemented a policy that allowed any employee to decline a one-on-one interaction with Ken if they felt he was out of line, and actually came up with a safe word—"pause"—that would end a conversation immediately. As another employee put it, "What kind of studio needs a safe word, though?"

Messy breakups, interpersonal conflicts, her opinions about people's dating lives, whether people were in therapy or not—these were apparently all subjects of discussion for Hunicke. Even comments about people's personal appearances would be discussed.

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Instead, we see the “grab-and-go” guy—grab, hold on, or run away—and that wins you the fight.

In Pride FC, they’d yellow-card you if you moved away, if you’d go on top and stall and not advance position. It’s not okay to stay there; they’re going to stand you up. You have to advance position, or be working to advance position, or they stand you up. There’s no elbows—you can’t hold the guy tight and do little elbows to make it look like you’re doing something. You have to create a certain amount of space to punch down on your guy, and that might be the same space that the guy on the bottom is trying to make so he can get back up. With this, we see a whole bunch of action—we get to see mixed martial arts, and the best guy wins. So you can’t run around in a circle; I’ll cut you off in the corner, like boxing. That’s how it should be.

What works to win in the UFC is to fucking hold on or to run away. But if you wanna come forward and try to finish the fight, that doesn’t work. It’s not based on punches landed or damage, either. I don’t know how they score it. How do I not know? If anybody knows, it should be me.

If I were to stop right now, I’m not very optimistic that everything’s gonna just be great. I could teach, open another gym or something like that. I’d be happier with that than going out there and losing miserably, like I’ve seen guys do—like all of them do. It’s kind of a curse. You can’t really get out: There’s always gonna be a bigger payday. But the second that I’m not getting paid more money than I got paid in my last fight, I’m done. I mean, I quit.