Over the last couple years, Dana White tried his darndest to shove the UFC down our throats; comparing it to a “real” version of professional wrestling. Marketing ploy or not, I was not sold.
I was a wrestling fan -- a HUGE wrestling fan. In fact, I and the guys bringing you this site were the same ones that brought you the news and opinion site ProWrestlingHeat.com... and you know what, Even I stopped watching four years ago.
Maybe I just outgrew it. Maybe it was because of Torrie Wilson making out with Billy Kidman on TV (and not me). Heck, maybe it was because I got a girlfriend. Mainly I got tired of the theatrics. I got tired of the same old act week in and week out.
Wrestling in the early 1990’s was about the actual wrestling. I loved it. In the early Y2J (Chris Jericho reference) it became about the show. Cheesy storylines that would make even the writers of General Hospital cringe. Screw the show, I wanted the sport: the sport that was taken away from me.
So, I responded by taking away the hundreds of dollars I spent each year on fifty-dollar pay-per-views and t-shirts with catchy sayings on them (If ya smell what Jason Paderon is cookin'!)
Still, despite no longer having me to boost its bottom line, the WWE has survived. As it turns out, this stylized crap of a product they were churning out had an audience after all: Guys who loved theatre, but were too macho to watch the interpretive dance version of the Lion King on Broadway.
The once thin line between sport and sports entertainment apparently underwent a steroids cycle that would make Barry Bonds jealous.
There was a glaring need for an alternative.
For the real fight fans, there was boxing, but we haven’t truly cared since Tyson was simultaneously biting human appendages while legitimizing careers. And Manny Pacquiao is still about 100 pounds too small and 100% too Filipino to become the next great American Champion. So where are we to turn?
People wonder why boxing is in such a decline and it could really be narrowed to three things. Lack of Americans, a lack of clear, crowned, undisputed champions and greedy promoters who killed the sport by pushing unready, B-rate boxers into our main events against champions who should have been kicked out of the sport a half-decade ago. Whoopee!
So just like wrestling and Fonzie, boxing jumped the shark. And all the while, business shark and Andre Agassi look-alike Dana White was circling his prey in preperation of a strike. He knew that his product, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, was about to take a Don King's afro-sized bite out of 18-40 year old male demographic that wasn't having its testosterone-driven need for compelling characters and brutal violence cared for.
Boy, did he bite.
The UFC is about as pure as you’re going to get. It’s filled with big named Americans that the public relates to like Chuck Liddell or Ken Shamrock and they do get their ass kicked by no-name up and comers when they aren’t prepared or are too old. There is only one champion in each division, and three months later, they’re matched up against another up-and-come who’s hungrier and more skilled than they were when they got the belt.
And they have their dominant fighters, like Matt Hughes, who despite being thrown in the ring with younger, faster guys, would always find a way to win. After Matt Hughes pretty much had his way with the Welterweight division for five years (insert Kobe Bryant joke here, I am not going there), he had a French-speaking wake up call from Georges St. Pierre, basically a non-gay, tougher version of Jean Girard from Talladega Nights.
I too was about to get a wake up call as I found myself watching the UFC 69 Pay-Per-View at my sister's house...
GSP fresh off his steady disposal of Matt Hughes, was matched up against Long-Island’s own 5'6" bad boy, Matt “The Terra” Serra, who earned a Rocky-esque title shot of a lifetime by winning the Utlimate Fighter Comback season.
I’m not going to pose as a real UFC fan. I’m not going to pretend like I order and analyze every Pay Per View like I did with Wrestling in my pre- and early post-pubescent years. I'm really not to sure why they don’t just repeatedly kick each other in the balls until one screams for their mother.
But what I did see was a guy who was supposed to be the future in GSP matched up against a guy who, with four losses, was out of Mixed Martial Arts all together before “The Comeback” season of The Ultimate Fighter resurrected his career.
Oh yeah, Serra was also about five inches shorter, ten years older, and trained with a guy nicknamed Drago (although Drago got his ass kicked on the undercard). (ROCKY! ROCKY! ROCKY!)
OK, so now Serra was on the biggest stage of his career, and was so much of an underdog that it seemed Joe Rogan (yeah, the Fear Factor guy) repeatedly tried to force-feed us Matt Serra’s MMA background like it was a hog testicle on Fear Factor.
Then it began. A thumbs up from Serra and Big John McCarthy’s signature “Let’s get it on!” started what should have been GSP’s easy stepping stone victory back to Matt Hughes.
The fight started and after 3 minutes, GSP slipped, the size differential disappeared. Boom! Boom! GSP Stumbles! A flurry of punches! More Stumbling… BOOM! GSP’s DOWN! SERRA WINS THE BELT!
Holy shit!
No way did Rocky just happen for real.
Then it struck me, as Matt Serra somersaulted around the octagon. The harshened reality set in. This could not happen in boxing anymore.
Not when Evander Holyfield and Roy Jones Jr., both of whom should have bowed out of the sport eight years ago, can literally still fight each other. Not when Antonio Tarver wiped the floor with Roy Jones Jr. in the peak of his prime, then went on to get his own ass handed to him by AARP spokesman Bernard Hopkins. Not when the boxing world still tries to convince me that Chris Byrd’s defensive style is reminiscent to that of Mohammed Ali in his prime when its probably more accurately compared to my little brother’s “No, stop!”-screaming, open hand-slapping and repeated bicycle-kicking defensive style he exhibits when I get pissed. (That’s right Jordan… be scared)
But it happened. And you know what; despite the semi-enormous payday that Dana White wanted from Hughes-Frenchie II, he very well might have done something that fight could never have accomplished: Legitimize his arguments.
Now I believe you Dana White, even though I don’t think you really believed yourself at times. But there you go. The any-man average Joe... the nine-to-one underdog...the pizza-loving chubby kid from Long Island... just defeated the guy who beat Goliath, setting up the inevitable Serra-Hughes (Sarah Hughes? The figure skater?? No the Fight! Oh, Boy! You better come up with something better then that Dana!)
But the difference is, at least for me, you can bet that I’ll be glued to the boob-tube watching David v. Goliath II in HDTV. Not even Don King could have done that.
Jason Paderon is the co-founder, columnist, and cartoonist for ChewThemOut.com. Additionally, he was a news reporter for the Staten Island Advance. He can be reached at paderon@chewthemout.com.
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