"How do you watch that stuff?"
If you're a hardcore fan of combat sports (mixed martial arts, boxing, kick boxing, etc.), you've been asked this question before. Sometimes a friend, or maybe a fellow worker, will ask it after you've told them, "Sorry, can't go out on Saturday. I'm watching the fights." Regardless of why they ask you, the question is hard to answer. I usually mutter something about how combat sports cater to a man's primal self—which makes me look and feel like some sick masochist. And unfortunately, some combat sports—boxing, for instance—are renowned for their casualties. Fans are most often asked, "How can you watch that stuff?" right after a boxer dies from ring injuries. And though, statistically, more people are injured in football, soccer, hockey and auto-racing, that doesn't help ease the guilty feelings we find creeping into our conscience. After all, combat sports are the only major sports in which the goal is to hit another man (or woman) until he stops hitting back. In mixed martial arts you could also choke them unconscious or bend their limbs to the point of snapping. Unless they tap. It makes us wonder, why do we watch this stuff?
But there is more to it.
A combat sport—at its best—is two men imposing their wills on one another. It goes beyond a mere match of skill or strength. It is a contest of desire. When all else is equal, the fighter who wants it more will be the one who ultimately has his arm raised in victory. This is one reason why we get frustrated when a fighter backpedals for an entire match. If only he threw more punches! If only he tried a bit harder! If only he wanted it more. Or when we watch a lay-n-pray artist hold his opponent down for three rounds without once committing to a finish. He's obviously got some skills, we say. After all, he's taking his opponent down at will. Why doesn't he try to finish him? The answer, of course, is that he doesn't want to win as much as some other great athletes want to win. He doesn't give his all. He doesn't impose his will.
Maybe fear has something to do with it. What happens to a man's confidence after he's been knocked out? Who knows what kind of torture he's endured in the gym? Maybe he's been hurt badly, and fears that throwing caution to the wind is too reckless. It leads to trouble. It leads to pain. Maybe that's what holds him back in the last rounds of a fight in which he is hopelessly behind on points and only a finish can salvage victory.
He knows and we know that in no other sport can a man go from winning handily to losing utterly, lying crushed, senseless, unconscious at the feet of his opponent, with all sense of pride ripped from him. One punch, one choke is all it takes. And herein lies its beauty. One can find—even in a bout between two talentless, free swinging club fighters—a certain beauty in sacrificing caution, in giving one's all in an effort to separate a man from his senses, knowing that any error in timing can result in one's own abject humiliation, incapacitation, and yes, even death.
You won't find that in football. Sure, a team can come back from 30 points down and miraculously win in the fourth quarter. But the team can't accomplish that in one play. Same with basketball or tennis or any other non-martial sport you can imagine. There are comebacks. Underdogs do win. But you won't ever find the equivalent of a one punch knock out win for a man who was losing every second of every round up until he landed the big one. A home run is cool. A slam-dunk is nasty. But a knock out is deadly.
Some fans question their love for the sport after they've seen an awful decision. We've seen a couple of those in recent years. Whether or not you believed Georges St. Pierre deserved the win against Johnny Hendricks, you had to wonder why the judges felt Timothy Bradley beat Manny Pacquiao. Some of us were ready to hang up the gloves, so to speak. I'm never watching another fight, we said. It's all crooked anyway. Why bother?
But inevitably, we are drawn like moths to a flame. And we realize that even when it breaks our hearts—when a good fighter is robbed, when a promoter screws his fighter out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, when two top guys in a division can't fight because they work for rival organizations, when a fighter dies in the ring—we will stick around for those moments that can be found no where else. We stick around, hoping to see another Ali/Frazier, a Griffin/Bonner, or a Frye/Takayama. It is in fights like these where the beauty of this sport holds us spellbound. We'll sit through a hundred Kalib Starnes/Nate Quarry fights just for the chance to see one Chuck Liddell/Wanderlei Silva.
We may not know what to say when someone asks us, "How do you watch that stuff?" We could talk to them of why we watch, of the excitement we feel when contemplating great match-ups. We could tell them it's the possibility of seeing something great, something beautiful, and perhaps they'd understand—I've converted a few—but then again, we may only be wasting our breath. "There is nothing beautiful about two men beating each other up," they say.
But they are wrong.
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