I have been watching sportscenter all morning and they keep telling me about the big boxing match in Vegas.
It got me to thinking that boxing is dead and UFC is alive.
here is a story I wrote a year ago, that is still applicable.
you know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
UFC
Ultimate Fighting Championship.
It’s blood and brutality inside an octagon where two men enter and one man leaves, sometimes with his scrotum in a bag.
UFC is an adrenalized wave sweeping the nation. It’s packed arenas and tap outs and fighting to the point of possible brain damage.
UFC is flourishing in a time when professional boxing has lost its luster. With no Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, or Mike Tyson to unify the sport, to draw eyeballs and dollar bills, boxing is lower on the sports dial than figure skating.
UFC is different. It is real. There are no World Wrestling Federation comic book characters named undertaker or Doctor vomit. It has none of the story lines of a Mexican soap opera.
UFC has all the reality of broken glass. It’s a pit bull snarl attached to a four barrel carburetor.
It’s boxing, and wrestling and karate and street brawling all in one mixing bowl of pain.
UFC is so real Freddie Kruger is a fan. There are no standing 8 counts or saved by the bell moments.
If you bleed, the fight goes on. If your ear is hanging by your cheek, the fight goes on. The winner is declared only after someone fades to black or their eyes roll up in their skull.
My friend who invited me to the Saturday night fights tells me that the combatants never suffer debilitating injuries.
Really?
“Unlike boxing,” my friend explains. “They don’t get pummeled to the point of concussion. No standing 8 counts, where guys have concussions, but the ref let them keep fighting. “
It’s hard to believe that nobody has ever died. Nobody! Ever. As I watch, I fully expect someone to die. I expect someone to die every round.
I’m watching a guy with a golf ball sized knot on the side of his skull. Sure looks like he might die.
I’m old school and remember getting together with my boys to watch fights, but I haven’t done this for decades. There just hasn’t been any lure to the sweet science lately.
So I walk into the a swanky house in the burbs.
There are kids upstairs somewhere, but they know better to come down to the living room which has become a “man cave.”
Beers and booze and heart clogging morsels line the granite counter tops. Guys from the burbs are talking crap as guys in the burbs will do.
The fight under cards are on when we arrive.
One guy looks like a serial killer, with drool pouring out of his mouth.
This guy belongs on a milk carton. He charges at his opponent, who has tattoos on top of tattoos.
There is a round house kick, a punch to the face, and then the serial killer picks the tattoo man up by the legs, tackles him, and dumps him on the canvas.
Serial killer jumps on top of tatoo man and starts tatooing his face trying to transform him into a bloody version of Mr. potato head.
The referee watches as the scrum continues.
Eventually the serial killer lands enough blows to tattoo man’s chin that tattoo man sees Jesus.
The ref jumps in and says You’re Out.
The serial killer is interviewed. I expect him to start eating small children.
He speaks with clarity and thought. His words have subjects and predicates and complete thoughts.
“These guys don’t have brain damage like boxers,” my friend blurts out. “They all have real jobs and they just like to fight.”
It’s true. Every winner is interviewed and I don’t need an interpreter to tell me what the fighters are saying. I don’t need a linguistic shoe horn to pry the words out of the combatants mouth.
The thing about UFC is this: Every round is the fight you hope you’ll see in a traditional boxing match. There is little clutching, and dancing in a circle throwing jabs that connect with air.
This is a full contact battle. 5 minute rounds of unadulterated viciousness.
If you don’t like blood and violence then you won’t like this.
It’s the train wreck you can’t stop staring at.
So after 4 under cards of great action, the main event appears. Jon Bones Jones versus Rashad Evans. Pupil versus teacher. Undisputed world champion against former world champion.
It went 5 rounds and Jones won. 5-five minute rounds. 25 minutes of elbow strikes, and spinning back fists to the face and round house kicks to the head. Jones was masterful, with his 84 inch reach, he connected to Evans head like lightning connects to a tree.
Suddenly. Electrified. Powerful.
Evans is a bull and will never go down, even when hit in the temple with a spinning elbow. He stays on his feet but he knows he has been schooled. The pupil is in deed the master.
There is a brutality to the bout, but also an amazing precision in its tactical destructiveness.
It is not a bar brawl that ends in 20 seconds. It is boxing at its best, it is kick boxing at its most precise. All in all, it is the most intense boxing match ever waged because knees to the head and elbows to the face are allowed. Jones stands 6’4″ tall and during clenches, he uses his shoulder to pound the shorter Evans in the face.
Have you ever seen a man pummel another man with a shoulder. It is surreal.
Jones uses every part of his body as a weapon.
The crowd cheers, the octagon is covered with blood from a dozen fighters who have fought barbarically.
If this was a story book, this is where Lancelot would fight Arthur.
At the end, one of the men would pull the sword from the stone, and the other would stand, blood dripping from his brow and applaud the victor.
UFC. The new sport of kings. Or at least of the masses.
And that is crazy.™