Dunning-Krueger applies to MMA, too


That guy with the bulging biceps is Kirill Tereshin, a “body builder” and MMA wanna-be. He looks strange; his body looks a bit like mine when I was in my teens, skinny and unathletic, but his upper arms are inhumanly huge. He skips leg day, doesn’t do cardio, and his clever idea for working his upper body is to inject his arms with massive amounts of oil. That isn’t muscle, it’s just inert goo squirted in there to inflate their size. I can think of a lot of physiological reasons that that is a bad idea, but here’s another one: he developed an inflated notion of his strength and decided to enter a mixed martial arts fight.

Yikes.

You can watch the whole fight on video at the link. Don’t worry, it won’t take much of your time.

It’s tragic. This guy is doing real harm to himself and is living with a deep delusion. He doesn’t need a coach, he needs mental health assistance.

Comments

  1. says

    WOW, that is some serious body dismorphic disorder. He needs help. I can’t even joke about it because I feel so bad for him. As someone who struggles with anorexia myself I can’t help but want to help him. The guy needs an intervention just as much as an alcoholic or a drug addict does.

  2. Artor says

    The organizers let him fight? Do they have no standards? Oh good, his opponent was not a maniac, and took it pretty easy on him.

  3. says

    This showed up on The Worst Things For Sale a while ago. Apparently it’s very popular in Brazil. Also apparently, since it’s a weird not-quite-cosmetic-surgery thing, the stuff is or was available for direct purchase, and people have died from doing the injections themselves because they hit a blood vessel and injected the goop into their circulatory systems. Yick.

  4. hemidactylus says

    It’s been awhile since I read some stuff about bigorexia, and similar to affluenza, it’s one of those alleged conditions easily overblown. I recall serious discussion about dolls for boys, such as GI Joe being somewhat relevant. But in my own case I recall getting heavily into working out and taking legal supplements and the whole Adonis body image disappointment thing. But I made respectable gains and still have back and shoulder issues because squats and military press gone awry (not at same time). Stupidity on my part. And I recall a high school gym coach mocking the quest for “beach muscles” to the detriment of proportionality.

    Having stuff injected or implanted takes it to a more disturbing level. Where’s the no pain no gain sacrifice in that? It is indicative of a problem not dissimilar to breast implants. Anorexia and bulimia are better acknowledged issues.

    On a separate aside, I just don’t get MMA. I grew up on wrestling and watched some boxing back in late 80s to early 90s. But why MMA?

  5. stroppy says

    Well sport fighting… judo, kick boxing, karate, etc… bunches of grappling out there, not just graeco-roman… etc.

    From that perspective, why not mash up and see what works? Which seems to be a combination of skill sets –basically striking and grappling together in one package.

    Chocolate plus peanut butter…

    If you’re into that sort of thing…

  6. mikehuben says

    The worst thing about it is that the original Popeye had bulging forearms and skinny biceps. I’m a purist, I guess.

  7. hemidactylus says

    @9-stroppy
    Well I can’t be too preachy given I watch plenty of fictionalized violence and sometimes football, but the gladiatorial reality thing is a bit disturbing, especially in its popularity. Not quite the carnage of von Damme versus Bolo Yeung but close enough.

    The martial arts in themselves can be good for people and sparring or more formal competition a part of that, but MMA seems to capitalize on a human need to consume vicarious violence that has more first hand consequence than fiction, though choreographed wrestling matches of my youth had ramifications too as large bodies moving at each other can end badly. And the outside the ring consequences can be bad too.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Side_of_the_Ring

    The von Erich tragedies a case in point.

  8. franta says

    It’s not that this is terribly important, but there are a couple of inaccuracies here. The real story is slightly less tragic and more amusing.

    This fight has nothing to do with MMA. Both guys are not fighters, both are most famous for making somewhat trashy videos on a weird part of Youtube known colloquially as Russian Youtube Poop. This guy is mostly known because of his arms, his opponent is a kind of feel-good alcoholic.

    Bazookaarms’ (Kirill’s moniker) “fans” were trying to nudge him into a fight with someone, anyone just for the thrill of it. As ridiculous as he is, the guy is self-aware and acknowledged many times that he doesn’t know how to fight at all. Still, somehow, fans raised enough money to make this fight happen. The whole thing was a weird joke and thankfully no one was injured.

    And yes, he already had complications with oil injections and had to go through surgery. As a result, Synthol (injected staff) was replaced with prosthetics.

  9. Amphiox says

    @hemidactylus
    I’d imagine the injections themselves aren’t painless, and the incredible medical risks involve can also count as a type of “pain”.
    The problem is, the gains are illusory. It’s all pain, no gain.

  10. John Morales says

    franta @12, thanks. Very informative.

    Sad part is that his upper arms look grotesquely swollen, but not at all muscular.

  11. lochaber says

    I’ve heard of the synthol thing before, and that struck me as weird enough, but isolating it to one body part just seems especially weird…