| DUBAI Has Interest in Ultimate Fighting! |
“I want to see blood,” says mixed martial arts fighter Dustin Hazelett. And in all probability, so too do the 10,787 fans who have crowded into Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Events Centre to watch him fight. The college-educated Hazelett is an up-and-coming fighter in one of the most violent and fastest growing sports in America, a promising performer in the bruising world of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
A fusion of jiu-jitsu, judo, karate, boxing, wrestling and other combat sports, the UFC has re-established itself after being close to extinction at the turn of the decade, when it was decried as “barbaric human cock-fighting”. The UFC has cleaned up its act since then, however. Its new owners have gained sanctioning and approval from respected state athletic commissions and tactics such as hair-pulling, headbutts and punches to the groin are now outlawed.
Yet to the naked eye, mixed martial arts still appears to be a notch above any other contact sport being practiced in terms of raw violence, its protagonists engaging in uncompromising hand-to-hand combat within an eight-sided cage, or Octagon. Even Dana White, the chief executive of the UFC who has overseen its transformation over the past five years, acknowledges it as “the most extreme of extreme sports”.
White insists however that UFC is not nearly as dangerous as it looks. The problem, he says, is one of perception: human beings are naturally repulsed by the sight of fighters being punched repeatedly while lying on the floor. “It’s the way we are programmed. When a guy is down on the ground, you don’t get on top of him and start hitting him,” White said. The sheer volume of blows landed in an average boxing contest are far more likely to inflict serious injury than a short, sharp UFC bout, which typically comprises between three to six, five-minute rounds.
“If I hit you when I’m standing up, I’m putting a full 205 pounds of bodyweight into my punch,” White says. “If I’m hitting you while I’m sitting on you, there’s not so much bodyweight and I’m not doing that much damage.” The counter-argument is that in boxing, opponents are usually in a position to defend themselves; a UFC fighter pinned to the canvas is not.
Nevertheless, White proudly points to the fact that for all the thinly-veiled promise of controlled mayhem within the Octagon, there has never been a fatality or serious injury at a UFC event. White is also adamant that ultimate fighting’s supporters are not flocking through the turnstiles craving no-holds barred savagery.
“There’s a very small niche of people that want to show up and see anything goes,” he says. “I would definitely say this is the extreme of extreme sports. And yeah, in the early days we used to be more a spectacle than a sport. But now we’re more a sport than a spectacle.” White says mixed martial arts had filled the vacuum created by the decline of boxing.
“The way I’ve built this business, the model I’ve used is the exact opposite of everything boxing has done over the last 20-25 years,” he says. The fear is that rival organisations seeking to secure a slice of the action will cut corners, exposing fighters to safety risks. “That’s why we want to get the sport sanctioned by every athletic commission out there,” says White.
“Because some of these organisations that are popping up like crazy are cutting corners, and that’s how someone’s going to get hurt.” The reasons for the recent proliferation in mixed martial arts events in the US are not hard to fathom: business is booming. In the space of two years, UFC has almost doubled in popularity.
The number of pay-per-view buys rose from 280,000 for an event in 2005, to 775,000 in mid-2006, eclipsing even the numbers for boxer Oscar De La Hoya’s bout with Ricardo Mayorga. “Right now, as far as pay-per-view goes we’re bigger than boxing, and we’re bigger than wrestling,” White says. “And we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. We’re not anywhere close to being mainstream. We’ve opened an office in London. We’re doing four fights a year. Then we’ll start targeting Europe and the rest of the world.
“The potential is enormous. Japan, South America, Germany, France and Italy. We’re ready for the world.”
| " | There are millions and millions of dollars to be made in Dubai. Bring the sport there for some crazy events! They will pay! |
