UFC - THE PROFESSION OF VIOLENCE
Like an awful lot of people on this planet, professional competitive sport has been and continues to be a major player in my day to day life. Football is my primary narcotic though it would be fair to say any form of elite athleticism will more than likely hold my attention, interest and curiosity.
Yes I know that watching rather than participating could be considered a form of voyeuristic masturbation while I also know the differing levels of frustration experienced by all humans require different forms of release and expression that is usually exploited by others at some cost – but hey I’m not hurting anyone with this innocent compulsion - am I?
Emperors, Kings, Queens, Popes, Imams’, dictators, despots and democratically elected political leaders have, throughout history, employed and promoted the distraction of organised sporting competition to keep at bay the terror of the masses rising up and expressing honest frustration - in an organized violent manner – for being resigned to a life of limited opportunity.
(Somehow always seeming to be in conjunction with soul destroying levels of disguised tyranny enacted and enforced by our betters through lies, laws and lashings of physical and financial punishments)
It is therefore not too big a stretch to say the progressive nature, construction and attraction of competitive sport continues to be popularized from levels of frustration requiring appropriate outlets by any given populace at any given time.
Such outlets can usually be provided for and defined by;
· The beauty of physical form and performance
· The thrill of second hand success
· The biting acceptance of honorable loss
· The controlled anger at poor decisions
· The bitter sweet shock of an underdog performance
All of these emotions and more are easily connected to exciting the human psyche and have the ability to assuage frustration for the most part. However it must also be accepted that the majority of humans, as evolved animals, have some need to experience or express levels of violent behaviour.
Professional competitive sport tends to provide a second hand outlet for such experience and expression.
From early adolescence to adulthood my two sons graduated from the wild excess of WWE to the octagon landscape of MMA. Throughout the heady days of Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Rock I played along as the dutiful Dad expressing enough interest to encourage and enough cynicism to allow for objectivity. They were kids and the nuances attached to sports like football struggled to compete with the glamour and lunacy of Vince McMahon’s extravaganzas. As a father and sports fan I knew enough to know this.
About six or seven years ago my two lads fell into watching and being intrigued by the relatively new professional sport of Mixed Martial Arts. At the time I wrongly assumed it was merely a graduation from the antics of professional wrestling and paid little or no attention – they were grown men who still took time from their busy schedules to watch the trials and tribulations of Arsenal FC with their somewhat out of touch Dad - which was something I viewed as parental success.
Then along came Conor McGregor!
My experience of MMA to date has grown beyond idle curiosity mainly because this Irishman became the biggest name in the game for a while.
My first hit of the MMA drug was administered with the high profile appearance on a world stage of the bombastic, uncouth, vulgarly base, hugely successful Dublin athlete expressing every sympathy and contradiction known to a ‘New’ Irish generation enjoying freedom and an unfettered voice.
At the time I wasn’t by any means hooked to the sport but rather fascinated by this single competitor.
McGregor’s antics ultimately delivered a strange downfall that included vast riches and an almost universal disparaging flow of criticism I had rarely seen before in the sporting world. His spectacular collapse from grace rather strangely drew me personally to look at the sport of MMA with more consideration and interest.
MMA - or particularly the franchise of UFC - fascinates me and frightens me in equal measure with its facilitation of every sporting extreme. It is truly the profession of violence that has begun to and will continue to diminish and relegate other pretenders, like boxing, to a thing of the sentimental past.
It’s a multi disciplined savagery contained within a strange arena having few rules and diabolical toughness - a modern gladiatorial contest to lever the inhibition of viewers to excessive heights of euphoria through second hand unthinkable violence - fascinating and compulsive.
I struggle to comprehend how it can be succeeded as a controlled sporting exercise and spectacle in providing an outlet for much of our human frustrations.
But hey what do I know – I always thought wrestling was fake.
