UFChumpionship

We headed over to Wren's* house to watch a thinly veiled sampling of homoerotica aka the UFC "Ultimate Fighting Championship" 73: Stacked Pay Per View Special. It was, as suspected, brutal, bloody, and arousing enough so that we got to hear grown suburban men scream out "man, that guy is ripped" in a semi-legitimate atmosphere that quelled all suspicions of engorgement. It was also, according to the announcer, a ballet of violence.

Um, contest. I had never watched the UFC before, my general impression being that it was something you might call the reality TV version of the WWE, something that appeals to our basest trainwreck proclivities and our need for sublimely idiotic narrative attached to adrenaline-inducing thuggery (With all apologies to A.C. Newman et al, I think it's really UFC that is the new pornography, that thing of sexualized content with no independent artistic merit). Having viewed it, though, nothing of my opinion has really changed, except that the homosexual porn jokes are even easier to make than I thought. It turns out that no holds barred style fighting does not often lend itself to ballet or even bad modern dance; it rather lends itself to calculated and brutal fighting with a distinct problem. In any given fight, it seems, one fighter would be at an advantage if the fight were to remain upright and stay in the realm of traditional boxing / kickboxing / karate style battles. The other, therefore, doesn't want to stay at arm's length and submit himself to getting drilled; he tries to get inside the other's reach and grapple instead. And so the majority of the time of the fights was spent not with two men artfully sparring, but instead had them trying to get into Greco-Roman poses on the ground with one man at the advantage.

Which simultaneously provides both the lack of anything ballet-oriented and everything with the other undertone orientations: most of the fights consisted of two scantily clad and sweaty men crawling all over each other, thrusting and grabbing and generally invoking blushing from even the least Victorian among us. It's not that it wasn't savage - there were elbows thrown at heads in these situations, kidney punches, and something affectionately known as the guillotine where the apparent intention was to cut off the opponent's carotid arteries and pop his skull out of joint in the same headlocked process. There's also strategy involved, as the smallest moves allowed for advantage and leverage that would determine the outcome of a match. We were watching with a bunch of Wren's friends who all seemed to be serious fanboys, who spoke of the technicalities of the moves and the figters' histories with equal fervor(though, to be fair, there were ample calls of "Elbow him in the spine!" as well). So I have to acknowledge that there was a lot going on that perhaps with repeated viewings I would become more inclined to easily see and analyze and enjoy.

But as it stood, on the one hand I was turned off by the base "let's watch dudes beat each other up" brutality of it, and on the other, I was dumbstruck by the boredom of it. The rounds were five minutes long, and the fighters would often spend the last four of those minutes writhing on the ground. Combine that with the WWE style story-telling, the product-shilling and the general LCD thick-necked heehawing of the general audience, and I don't think I'll be coming back. I'm all for cultural equality and embracing the low brow and all, but if I'm going to watch "Ultimate Fighting," I guess what I was really looking for WAS that violent ballet, and impressive as it was, not the mat-level wrestle-fest that I saw.

(Super-qualifier - if you actually are a UFCer and reading this, then by all means, you are awesome. You are ripped and muscular and strong, though I emphasize that I mention that for the "yikes, you could crush" me aspect and not the wink/nod/lip-lick "you could crush me" aspect. I give you an A+ on your performance; please don't come to my house).

* - "Wren," not Ren. A tragic development, really, as it prevents a dearth of "and Stimpy" jokes from flooding your way. Or maybe I'll just keep telling them anyways, relying on the homophonic situation to include such gems as "Nyet, how do you feel about the correct spelling of her name?" to which I would obviously reply, "No sir, I didn't like it" after a pregnant pause.