In this week’s Trading Shots, retired UFC/WEC fighter Danny Downes joins MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes to look at MMA myths, both in and out of the cage.

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Downes: Well Ben, tomorrow is Columbus Day. Not exactly one of those holidays that many people have circles on their calendars, but it’s still a day off for some people. As you may know, Christopher Columbus wasn’t a brave, tireless explorer who set out to prove the world was round (Pythagoras beat him to that by about 2,000 years). Not only that, he was brutal enslaver and might even have introduced syphilis to Europe.

All that aside, the myth of Christopher Columbus still persists. That got me to thinking, what MMA myths are still out there? What mixed martial fallacy would you like to squash?

Fowlkes: Ooh, I love when we seize the thinnest possible pretext to justify a mostly random MMA discussion. But I could see a lot of different ways to go with this question, since the MMA world seems burdened by many myths, now that I think about it.

For instance, there’s the business side of things, where I think many fans think fighters receive ample pay for their suffering and sacrifice. They don’t. Not even close. It’s easy to look at disclosed payouts, see figures like $90,000 for Ross Pearson at UFC 191, and think, “Hell, that’s more than most people make in a year, and he made it in one night!”

Of course, he didn’t. Most fighters spend weeks preparing for each bout, which includes all sorts of costs fans rarely think about, and that’s before things like taxes (which can get tricky for fighters who compete all over the world) and management fees start eating into your take-home pay.

Then you’ve got to pay your coaches, maybe a little something for sparring partners, and you’d better put some of this away for when you’re forced to retire before you’re 40. It’s not a lucrative life for the vast majority of fighters, especially considering what they go through to live it.

But then, maybe enough people realize this to prevent it from qualifying as a myth. Maybe they even think it’s fine for lower-level fighters to be meagerly compensated, because this is a sport where only superstars earn top dollar. But even that is a myth, Danny, because it’s those superstars – your Ronda Rouseys, your Conor McGregors – who are really underpaid. They feel like they’re getting good money, probably because they were both poor fairly recently, but compared with what the company makes off them it is, as Lawrence of Arabia might say, a trifle.

But maybe I’m boring you with all this financial talk, Danny. I assume you were hoping to discuss the myth of “octagon control”?

Downes: I don’t know if octagon control is so much a myth as a supreme mystery. It’s like people’s perception of God. It means different things to different people, and we won’t know the answer until the great beyond.

The myth that I’d like to tackle is that “iron sharpens iron.” Not just to set the record straight as an amateur blacksmith, but as a broader concept. Fighting doesn’t work like the movies. Getting beat up or hurt doesn’t make you better. Sure, you need to be comfortable with being hit, but equating punishment with learning is a problem with a lot of young fighters.

In that same vein, it’s OK to rest. Too often fighters refuse to take time off when they’re injured and they make the problem worse. Fighting is about learning to remain calm in uncomfortable situations, but there’s a difference between training through pain and training through injury.

Beyond the health aspect, I think this mentality is pervasive among competitors and fans of all sports. It’s the type of attitude that causes people like Pete Rose to say this about Josh Donaldson. You especially see it in the NFL now. People complain about athletes sitting out games because of concussion-like symptoms. Guess what? Leaving a game because you have a concussion doesn’t make you “soft.” Same way that dropping out of a fight because you get concussed in training doesn’t make you soft. Too often we confuse short-sightedness and stupidity for masculinity and toughness.

What other misconceptions would you like to correct? Are you going to tell us how a “motivated” B.J. Penn could beat anyone? How about the Brock Lesnar comeback? Maybe you can tell us that there really is a concerted effort by the so-called media to destroy the sport.

Fowlkes: How about the myth that the old days of MMA were somehow better than the present age? Because I see this nostalgic pining for a bygone era every once in a while, and it always makes me wonder, have these people not bothered to go back and watch this stuff recently? If they had, they’d be forced to conclude that the product, the athletes, and the presentation are all far better now than they were during MMA’s primordial phase.

And, Danny, I say this as a guy who has a PRIDE 2006 Grand Prix DVD on the shelf in his basement. I also say it as a guy who has watched that DVD recently. It’s not awful, but it is what I would call the beginning of the modern MMA era. You go back past the middle of the last decade, and you see a lot of ugly, sloppy stuff. Which makes sense, in a way, because back then we were still in the process of figuring out what this sport was, as well as what worked and what didn’t.

Which reminds me, as long as we’re having a conversation about myths, maybe we should give a tip of the cap to MMA in general. While it is plagued by its share of myths, it has dispelled an awful lot of them. Think of all the useless martial arts that were exposed by early MMA. Think of all the dumb theories and flawed strategies. MMA is a sport, with rules and judges and all that, but it’s also been a proving ground. Early MMA isn’t anything I want to watch now, but it did tell us a lot about what fighting really looks like.

Technique-wise, what myths are you sick of, Mr. Retired Professional Fighter? What fat do we still need to trim from our understanding of the martial arts?

Downes: I applaud your attempt to dispel MMA nostalgia. Sadly, I think your campaign to tell the masses that MMA didn’t reach its peak in 2006 will be as successful as telling people the 1950s wasn’t America’s “greatest generation.” Who cares about rampant misogyny and racism when everyone owns a Cadillac?

As far as technique is concerned, people need to realize that every strike doesn’t have to be a finishing blow. I still don’t know what a significant strike is, but there are plenty of attacks that have utility beyond knockouts. Jabs, push kicks, and feints aren’t the sexiest of maneuvers, but they all have a place.

What’s the least understood, though, is what I’ll call hand play. It’s a concept I learned in my early muay Thai practices, but it applies to a lot of other martial arts. It involves a lot of nuance, but it’s incredibly important. You can use it to create space, set up elbows, initiate the clinch and a variety of other techniques.

In kickboxing, it’s an essential part of striking. That sport uses closed gloves, so you don’t have to worry about fouls. In MMA, however, it often leads to eye pokes. Jon Jones is notorious for these. Everyone from Joe Rogan to your average Joe on Twitter decries this and calls for the rules to be changed, points to be deducted, and the gloves themselves to be modified.

Don’t get me wrong, a foul’s a foul. But the outrage from people who think Jones is doing it on purpose is misplaced. Yes, the technique is on purpose, but they aren’t trying to poke someone in the eye. When it comes to sparring in the the gym, rarely do you use MMA gloves. Most striking practices use kickboxing gloves. Consequently, fighters don’t learn how to hand play with their fingers exposed.

Enough of the nuanced takes on technique and philosophy. Where are the hot takes, Ben? Aren’t you going to tell us that Royce Gracie wasn’t that great? Maybe Fedor Emelianenko was a fraud pumped up by Putin and the Yakuza. Don’t you think Bonnar/Griffin was boring? Are the Fertitas Reptilians?

Fowlkes: Royce Gracie was equal to the task before him in those early UFCs, but he was no Rickson Gracie. Fedor was awesome, but also had some easy nights (and likely even easier ones to come in his forthcoming return). Griffin-Bonnar I was a lot of fun, and also a real mess. The Fertittas, as far as I know, are just regular old humans born into enormous wealth and privilege.

What I’m saying is, a lot of myths about MMA history aren’t so much stuff that’s flatly untrue, but stuff that leaves out the shades of grey. Like the myth that the Fertittas and Dana White “saved” MMA by buying the UFC and reforming it into a genuine sport rather than a spectacle. It’s a nice story, but it’s not strictly true. It ignores a lot of the changes that had already taken place, and the work by people like Jeff Blatnick to move things in that direction before Zuffa ever got involved.

But see, that’s why myths persist, is because they’re simpler and easier to tell and understand than the more complex version of history that’s usually the more accurate one. They’re also usually told louder and more repetitively than the “well, actually…” version of history. It’s the same in MMA as it is anywhere else. Want people to remember the whole story intact? Better come up with an easily digestible narrative or a clever rhyme, bro. You know, like the historian and poet Nik Lentz.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who also writes for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.