The Machida Puzzle Box

“Himitsu-Bako” is the blanket term for the design and implementation of Japanese puzzle boxes. Beginning in the 1600s, craftsmen would manufacture the shells so that they could be opened only by the owner of whatever valuables were stored inside. This usually involved finding a “secret” pressure application or performing a series of adjustments in sequence. A box produced by the legendary Yoshio Okiyama demanded 125 different motions before it would relinquish its contents.

You can probably guess where this is going.

Lyoto Machida made history Saturday night by becoming the first mixed martial artist to win a major title by wielding an art perceived as primitive and nearing extinction. He didn’t outwrestle Rashad Evans, he didn’t submit him and he didn’t gorilla-press him. He feinted, floated out of the way of hammering strikes and applied the principles of Shotokan karate he established while still in diapers to send Evans down and thinking of his sleep number.

Many -- including myself -- were confident Evans’ physicality and wrestling ability would at least give Machida a hard time. There had to be a limit to what his brand of karate could deal with. Greg Jackson, Evans’ trainer, was pegged to test that theory.

But once the two engaged, it wasn’t even competitive. The man who knocked down heavyweights earlier in his UFC career, who folded up Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin as expertly as a Gap part-timer, barely touched Machida.

No one, it seems, can touch Machida, literally or metaphorically.

You’re going to hear a lot of that in the coming weeks: that Machida’s style is impregnable, that he’s so adept at getting out of the way he’s practically teleporting. He’s going to be deified because that’s what sport does when someone looks good. Fans like the idea that there’s a level -- shades of Jordan, Woods, Gracie, Emelianenko -- that no one else can touch. Obsessed with it to the point where a 50-year-old Rickson Gracie, who was never once in a competitive fight beyond a bruised Funaki, is still talked about. Imagine how someone competing at an elite level will be received.

This is all fine. MMA needs its mythological figures to intrigue the media. Sports traditionally reach new levels of respect and popularity when someone special arrives. There may be no one better to fill that spot in MMA’s third decade than Machida, who speaks respectfully, doesn’t grab his crotch unless he’s just been clocked there and speaks convincingly of his love for family and art.

But because MMA is MMA, he’ll be defeated. Soon. Not too soon -- not against Quinton Jackson, who will stubbornly stand up with him -- but soon enough.

Possibility one: Evans in a rematch. Forget trying to pick off Machida on the feet. It’s not happening until he gets older and slower. Close in, get his feet over his head and stack him against the fence. Punch until done.

Possibility two: Randy Couture. Laugh all you want, but if Couture gets inside, Machida is going for a ride. Couture’s retirement fight if he fails in another heavyweight title bid, but only if Machida agrees to do it at heavyweight. (Guy’s gonna be 46 soon. Cut him some slack.)

Possibility three: MRSA.

In Machida, the UFC has finally found its first real enigma. Champions have gone on impressive runs in the past, but none have been unblemished from the start. (Sorry, Fedor Emelianenko fans: As much as that one loss reeks, it’s still there.) Losses chip away at fighter veneers. Fans get restless. They look elsewhere.

But Machida doesn’t bend. He’s in the most physically demanding and superficially damaging sport in the world and comes out looking like he just finished a step aerobics class. It’s preposterous.

Another puzzle box designer, Hiroshi Iwahara, recently created a design that requires 324 steps to solve. Perhaps one should be gifted to Quinton Jackson. He’s going to need the practice.

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