The Enticement of Blood over Elegance
The fight was coming on. We were talking about it poolside, with beers and party snacks. I was not one who followed boxing. I didn’t care for it, but as with anything else, it was something I could get into if everybody else did. This match was highly-publicized, and this one house in the middle of our little neighborhood was just one of the millions throughout America having a similar home event.
But I wanted to talk anyway, and though I didn’t have anything to say about boxing, I brought up MMA. These days, it was different than in the days when I was watching it. So, I subtly brought up those old days. The Mixed Martial Arts institution had gone through some big changes. When I was living in Asia, I was watching the Japanese version of the sport, which was called Pride. In it, you had contenders from all over the world, showing off talents that came from different disciplines of martial arts. That was the part of it I loved; you could never really predict what was going to happen because there were too many variables. It made the matches unpredictable, which meant to me that they were exciting!
But not everyone agreed. The guy that was listening to my reminiscences of Pride was saying how things were cleaned up nowadays. You could now see that it is more elegant in its present incarnation than in what was going on before. Now, it’s respectable.
But I wouldn’t be too interested in it now precisely for that reason. I wasn’t looking for elegance and respectability. I mean, do you want to see guys beating on each other or not? People who are not into boxing consider boxing brutal — a cruel sport! The old MMA was far worse, but why split hairs on what is elegant and what is not brutal? Is it less brutal now? If so, then by how much? If you don’t want broken limbs and a profusion of blood, then watch boxing.
In Asia, I couldn’t understand what they were saying in the Pride matches because they were not translated into English, but what did you need to know when two guys were duking it out? I had my favorites. From the pictures of the flags, I knew what nationality they represented. There were all types from various parts of the world, and I only identified them by country and description, since I never learned their names. There was the short Brazilian guy who looked like a thug and the Croatian cop (shown in uniform when the stats came up) who was good with high kicks. Eventually, I got to know who was the champion, a Russian, an undefeated, stoic-looking man who was dumpy-looking compared to some of the more muscular contenders. Anything goes! Now, they have weight divisions and all the other regulations, but in those days, a giant can go against an average man, a bodybuilder could go up against an obese mountain.
If you go further back to when the whole thing started, you had American ninjas against judo black belts against green berets against kick-boxers. Fingers got broken. Arms were snapped. Right there on TV! Completely legal and solicited by a multi-million dollar corporation. It was great fun for the boys that remembered the schoolyard fights, the pitting of one superhero against another in the comic books, always wondering who was going to win.
I remember Gracie. The Gracies were a staple in MMA. They were the most famous martial arts family in the world. The bout was uneven. The massive man in nothing but tiny briefs was a muscle house, and he was on top of average-size Gracie, who was still clad in his Jiu jitsu gi, like a little boy showing off his uniform, though I don’t know how he kept it on for so long, as the big guy was grabbing and yanking on it, moving Gracie under him, trying to get him in a proper choke hold. Gracie was doing nothing but squirming his way out of it again and again. Gracie’s face was suspended by that one horrified expression, and meanwhile the big guy was pounding on his face, giving him body blows, pushing for that opening he needed to choke Gracie out. This was going on for fifteen whole minutes — interminable — exactly like that! With the guy on top of Gracie, manipulating him! Gracie was under the guy, making his way across the mat, and the guy was delivering blow after blow, trying to weaken him enough to get the grab to choke him out. It was almost unnoticeable, but when Gracie repositioned his leg to go across the man’s chest, it simply looked like a desperate defensive move, and then it shifted. Using his leg and arms, Gracie choked the guy out, and we went crazy! How could he do that? It was amazing. After all that, Gracie won!
That was the type of factors I was talking about. Anything could happen. This brand of competition was far more real to young men in those days than boxing could ever be. It was not about elegance; it was about spectacle. The brutality proved which type of bout was the true inheritor of the Roman circuses, made for the blood-thirsty masses that were not required to know a thing about the various martial arts involved. By contrast, you had to know about boxing to appreciate it, like you had to intimately know about baseball to be a fan. I do recall that along with all the other types of fighters, boxers tried MMA, and they just couldn’t compete.