Mixed Martial Arts

A few weeks ago, I noticed a show called The Ultimate Fighter on SpikeTV. It was a reality show, where contestants competed for a contract to fight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship . Three bouts were televised during the show's finale, which intrigued me since the UFC is normally only on pay-per-view. I decided to record the finale on my ReplayTV to see if I liked it and to find out how it compared to my previous conception of the UFC.

My sole prior experience with the UFC was watching one of the very early UFC shows (back in the mid-90's) on videotape at a friend's house. It was entertaining due to its novelty (slogan: There are no rules!) and the shear insanity of it all. There were no weight classes, almost no rules, and guys had to fight up to four times in one night. There wasn't much substance to it, though, so although I enjoyed watching it once, I wasn't itching to see more.

The fights on the finale of The Ultimate Fighter were quite a bit different than the fights I remembered from that old videotape. They took place in the same caged octagon, but now there were weight classes and more (mostly common sense) rules (e.g., no groin shots). The fights were also of a much higher strategic and technical quality than the old fights. Instead of two guys with beer guts running at each other and punching wildly, competitors were using proven fighting systems (notably Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu ). In addition to being able to take a punch, the fighters clearly possessed a great deal of skill.

I enjoyed watching the finale show, so I decided to rent some some UFC and PRIDE (a Japanese organization similar to the UFC) DVDs from Netflix. I've been really impressed with how far the sport has come. It even has a proper name now: Mixed Martial Arts . You can count me as a new fan.