UFC: Ultimate Face Contorting

I’m excited for this weekend, because it is the UFC fight between Shane Carwin and Brock Lesnar for the heavyweight title. For you pacifists out there, the UFC stands for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. They basically put two dudes in a ring, where they proceed to try and see who can cause the most brain damage to the other person. There are basically no rules in the UFC, and they only have small gloves as opposed to the large ones they use for boxing. This means that these guys get to display their creative side when it comes to deciding how they want to hurt the person in the cage with them.

Those of you who don’t get why this is exciting clearly have never watched a fight or might be a member of a religious sect that frowns upon senseless violence. There’s just something about two people just trying to beat the snot out of each other. And it’s not like this is a new phenomenon. I mean, the Romans made dudes kill each other for entertainment, and they got a lot of things done as a civilization. Just remember that when people tell you that American entertainment today is too violent. At least we don’t feed people to tigers (unless you count Sigfried and Roy that is).

There was a while when boxing was the big fight sport, but then Mike Tyson just went crazy and started biting off people’s ears. It’s sort of sad to think that an entire generation of kids will forever just know Mike Tyson as “that guy who sang the Phil Collins song in ‘Hangover.’” Anyway, it took UFC awhile to get really big, mainly because it was highly illegal almost everywhere. Today, there is a time limit on matches and some rules (like no hair-pulling or punting people in the face while they are down). In the old days, that wasn’t the case. They just put two people in a cage with no gloves, rules, or time limits and just told them to beat each other up until somebody gave up or became unconscious.

I first became a fan of the UFC because of a fighter who lives on the Big Island, B.J. Penn, who was the lightweight champion until three of the dumbest judges in the world robbed him of the title a few months ago. Penn was born with two rocks for hands (and judging by the punches he can take, another in his head) and no bones in his body. How else can you explain this (go to the 2 minute mark). Penn’s flexibility has made him one of the best in the world at jiu-jitsu, a skill which by now you have heard at least one idiot in a Tap-Out t-shirt reference. But in case frat boy didn’t explain it well enough, jiu-jitsu is the art of bending people’s limbs in a direction they were not meant to be bent and trying to deprive your opponent of oxygen.

But as good as Penn is, Brock Lesnar is in a whole other category. In fact, he might be a member of a completely different species, presumably the one that includes Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman. He looks like a villain from a James Bond movie. The man was put on Earth for one reason only: to hurt people. And he is very good at it. And his opponent, Shane Carwin, is no pushover either. He has won every one of his fights by a knockout within four minutes. Just think about that for a moment: no man on Earth has been able to be in the same cage as this guy for five minutes without ending up staring at the canaries flying around his head.

The other reason the UFC is great is that it gives men another excuse to get together and drink and eat and enjoy a sporting event. The camera often pans through the crowd, and all of the people there have one thing in common: they are very drunk. My roommate and I have hosted viewing parties several times, which we refer to as “Man Night.” This is sort of ironic, since the only two people to have attended every single Man Night besides myself are the Mosher sisters, which leads me to believe that women are crazy and just enjoy violence.

On a side note, they just announced a ban on vuvuzelas at all future UFC events because UFC organizers aren’t stupid, so I don’t need to watch it on mute. This is good, because one of the announcers is Joe Rogan, and it’s pretty hilarious to listen to him talk about fighting knowing he hosted Fear Factor. Plus he dishes out tons of sexual innuendos the whole night, like “he likes it on top, from there he can really pound away.”

But if Joe Rogan sex jokes and violence isn’t enough, there are always the women. Like boxing, the UFC has card girls, who happen to look like this. And then there is this girl, who is actually a fighter. She’s actually very good, but I want her to retire before she does something to that face of hers. That would be a real tragedy.