According to Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle, there are three principles necessary for change to take place. There must be something new that comes to be, there must be something old that passes away, and there must be something that stays the same throughout. These three principles are referred to as form, privation, and matter.
These are the principles that Bojan Velickovic (9-2) and Gilbert Smith (9-3) are currently applying to their MMA careers. Now on the surface, they appear to have nothing in common other than their chosen occupation. Velickovic grew up in war-torn Serbia nearly 4,500 miles away from Smith's native New York City. Smith is also seven years older than Velickovic and a veteran of the U.S. Army. However, if you dig a little bit deeper, the parallels these two share leading into their featured welterweight bout at RFA 20 is clear. They are both embracing change, they are both reinventing themselves as fighters, and they both know what is at stake.
At universities around the world, the College of Arts and Sciences is usually the largest college on campus. Students from other schools are often required to take courses offered by the College of Arts and Sciences, because they require elective courses to be taken within certain areas to provide a well-rounded education for each student.
Top MMA camps are very much the same, but sometimes when a star pupil excels quickly in the arts, the sciences need some time to catch up. This is only noticeable at the highest level of MMA in the form of effectively cutting weight to maximize your skills against your opponent's skills without size being the deciding factor.
After finding MMA, both Velickovic and Smith competed successfully in the middleweight (185-pound) division. In fact, they competed so well, that they were both selected by the UFC to participate on different seasons of their hit reality television show The Ultimate Fighter. Velickovic was a middleweight on TUF 19, while Smith was a middleweight on TUF 17. However, their time on the show made them realize it was time to start competing against men their own size.
This is a fact that even UFC champions have had to face in their careers. B.J. Penn, Lyoto Machida, and Frankie Edgar only began focusing on the science of weight-cutting after winning a UFC world title in a heavier weight class. However, in a day and age where everyone is training everything, top nutritionists are being enlisted, and proper weight-cutting is a must, it has become necessary to balance the arts and sciences of combat in order to succeed at the highest level.
On Friday, November 7th, Velickovic and Smith will meet in true Aristotelian tradition at the 1STBANK Center in Broomfield, Colorado for their showdown at RFA 20. The form is their more physically imposing size as welterweights, the privation are the days of competing against larger men, and the matter is the fact they are still the same highly-skilled mixed martial artists that have brought them to this pivotal moment in their career.
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