This is known as Sycamore Gap, and if you're sycamore blogs, then maybe it's time to go... I intend to write comments, post jokes, musings, and anything that I can find lurking in the recesses of my mind.
My first piece is on MMA - mixed martial arts.
I have been a boxing fan since I was little (insert obvious joke) and I can't explain why. Part of the attraction was a logical offshoot from wrestling, of which I was a disciple in the early 90s. For anyone who can't remember how a punch was thrown in wrestling, stand up, throw a "roundhouse right hand" making sure you miss by at least three inches, and stomp your right foot as the blow whistles past. Any normal person will look at you bemused, so try and perfect the art on someone called Luke, Butch, Virgil or Haku for the proper effect.
But at some point I grew to savour real punches. The sound of leather on jaw, the joust of mind over matter, the way the stricken fighter sat in his corner peers through a swollen eye at the arse crack of the round card girl. There is no other sport, perhaps excepting grand prix, where an ending can result so explosively and brutally. In football, if a team is 5-0 up with two minutes left there's not a lot of point. In boxing, it's never over (for those who remain unconvinced check out Julio Cesar Chavez vs Meldrick Taylor on Youtube; a desperate final burst from Chavez dropped the brilliant Taylor with two seconds to go, changing the fight and more tragically, Taylor's livelihood.)
The new upstart MMA apparently retains this excitement with interest. It's boxing on acid. It's no-hold barred, multinational playground fighting. It's two men fighting in a steel octagon over three five minute rounds. If it were music, it would be Phats and brawl or Whitknee Houston. If it were food it would be fists and chips, or Monster punch. I'll stop now.
Some would argue it's a higher form of the art, enabling more variation in use of the elbow, knee and foot.
But the sight of two men scuffling on the floor trying to slip blows in-between elbows and arms in a bloody tangle reminded me more of New Road on a Friday night. I half expected one of them to examine a folded-up Zorba menu in his back pocket while the other swigged Sainsburys 22p lager in his corner between rounds.
In one fight a precise elbow split open a guy's eyebrow. Claret was pouring out like a fat woman's hip over a size 6 pair of jeans. One particular blow a minute later sent blood literally flying onto the camera, resembling that scene in Predator where the alien stands above Bill Duke and blasts lasers into his mind.
Rose tinted glasses indeed. By round three, repeated smashes to the wounded patch, by now resembling burger meat, had left a smear of platelets and haemoglobins in an arc of gore at least
5ft long across the canvas.
In boxing it would have been stopped instantly. Henry Cooper was slashed by Cassius Clay and resembled the girl out of Carrie, and was taken to the corner and pulled out. At the very least, a fighter would be taken to the corner to be inspected (Hagler/Hearns etc). In MMA, the referee, obviously thinking about Coronation Street, or his piles, or cheese and onion crisps, let the massacre continue to an eventual one-sided points decision.
The victor's blond hair was salmon colour by the end. The whole episode turned my stomach...and yet I could see what the fuss is about. The bravery, the technique, the atmosphere... somehow it was validated.
When Rampage Jackson and Forrest Griffin squared off in the sold out main event, over 25 minutes of tactical warfare, I was hooked. Griffin, apparently one of the sport's stellar stars, realised he had to take the brutish Jackson's legs away. So he kept kicking them. Hard. It made me wince more than any punch to the face ever could, but you could see Griffin's mind working and appreciate the talent and strategy he was putting together.
The Mandalay Bay in Vegas was sold out, and by the looks of things most of them were kids. Kids who should be boxing fans, but prefer the immediacy and the brutality of MMA. Too many main events in boxing have been bore-a-thons, or more regrettably on one occasion bite-a-thons. The top fighters have avoided each other too many times. COntenders have been avoided, no-names have got title shots.
So fans have turned to MMA and boxing better look out, because it's (insert cliche - "on the ropes", "receiving the count", "in danger of being knocked out", or my choice "clinging on like a punch-drunk old wino who's been clipped round the face more times than Joan Rivers) .
It's still the better sport - anyone who saw the masterpiece that was Margarito and Cotto last week will confirm this - but it needs more otherwise it will be blown out of the ring.
I have several suggestions, but they are for another time.
No comments:
Post a Comment