Slice Ain’t Nice: MMA on CBS
posted in Scholar Athlete |
As if the release of Sex and the City: the Movie wasn’t enough to get your juices flowing and or get your need for a lobotomy kicked into high gear, CBS ushered in a new frontier of American sport on Saturday night. That’s right, while I was giving my time to sit in a crowded room full of chatty ladies, CBS aired a collection of MMA fights, which pretty much can’t get more opposite from SATC. What a wild weekend it was.
Since you probably have more sense than to either sacrifice your hard-earned Saturday night or a large portion of your DVR’s memory with this dreck, I’ll sum it up for you. CBS screwed the pooch in every way in their attempt to make MMA, Mixed Martial Arts, the hot new thing on the American sports scene, although there’s clearly no way that could ever happen. But, as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself.
If you don’t know what MMA is, which you shouldn’t, I’ll give you a quick and judgmental rundown. It’s like boxing but way more stupid. Instead of just punching each other, these guys kick and wrestle and writhe on the ground attempting to get the other guy to “submit.” This is how you win without a knockout; where one guy has the other in a classic WWF sleeper hold and the holdee has to tap out and voluntarily end the fight. Look, boxing has a lot of problems, but at least those dudes stand toe to toe and fucking wail on each other until one can’t stand anymore. Obviously I’m not suggesting that any of these men could be beaten by me in the cage, but I am saying that if rolling around on the ground until you had your hands around the other guy’s neck was schoolyard-legal, this country would be in even worse shape than it is today.
Ok, so CBS is airing this thing and they are hyping it to the fucking ceiling. One of today’s greatest announcers, Gus Johnson, called the event and while a whole lot of other writers made some variant on the “how the mighty have fallen” observation, I want to commend Gus. Hey, work is work and it takes a lot of dedication to one’s family to waste their time and subjugate their talent on national television. You go, Gus.
But, all things considered, there should have been some exciting moments here. Too bad this sport is so awful that the first two fights on the card lasted a total of two minutes combined. In each case, one unbalanced fighter managed to land a right hook onto the chin of the other even more unbalanced fighter and that was that. No standing ten count to let the afflicted fighter shake the cobwebs and get back to work. Nope, just bam and it’s over. There’s really something wrong with any fight that ends after one good punch. Another problem, by the time the second fight was over, nearly an hour of CBS’s broadcast had gone by. Sixty minutes of fluff for two minutes of fighting. Someone please tell the sports executives out there that we don’t care about these people AT ALL. We don’t need to know where they’re from and how they train, and we definitely don’t need to see them punching a dusty heavy bag in a barren garage filled with old tires. Also, we know that they want to and think they can beat their opponent, you don’t need to show us. In fact, no interviews at all next time. And while we’re cutting bullshit time wasters out, how ’bout losing the five minutes when the fighters saunter out of the locker room and into the arena pro wrestling style. It’s so boring.
Back to the action, two women then beat the shit out of each other which, I have to admit, was pretty cool. Unfortunately, we were once again deprived a legit ending when the fight had to be called after the second round due to the crazy swelling of one girl’s eye. Then we got a middleweight title fight (featuring belt holder Robbie Lawler) which was called due to an accidental eye gouge, even though, according to the MMA fighter slash expert commentator Frank Shamrock, the guy who got gouged should have had five minutes to recover. This is the problem with those open fingered gloves they wear, and it’s a problem for the sport when four fights go by and none of them have real endings. As for the main fight, the one that was supposed to be the big draw featuring internet sensation Kimbo Slice, well, because CBS wasted so much time during their broadcast, the two hours expired and my DVR cut it off. Sometimes you get lucky, I guess. But, I read on the internet that Kimbo won on a TKO when the other guy’s cauliflower ear took a shot and wouldn’t stop bleeding, so it seems to have been more of the same. Five fights, no real knockouts.
There’s a lot going on here, in truth. On the surface, you have a major network propagating the idea that boxing isn’t violent enough and that’s why MMA is a welcome alternative, but at the same time, the sport is actually so violent that such great lengths have to be taken in order to protect the fighters that the fights themselves suffer greatly. A little higher up you have CBS proclaiming that something revolutionary and amazing is happening, even though it couldn’t come to a deal with UFC, MMA’s major leagues. The Elite XC fights that we saw were minor league stuff, exemplified by the fact that Robbie Lawler washed out of the UFC, and the fact that Kimbo’s record coming in was a whopping 2-0. If your biggest draw is a total novice things are seriously fucked up.
As I watched the “what is MMA?” educational pre-taped bits, and the interviews with the fighters before and after their fights, I couldn’t stop thinking about the XFL. Remember the XFL? It was that football league launched by Vince McMahon of the WWE and it was supposed to be a tougher, harder, more fun version of the NFL. It flopped. Hard. I remember when it premiered, I was in college and it seemed perfectly acceptable to get baked and check it out. What a mistake that was, but it seems useful to have watched because it was basically the exact same broadcast as CBS’ MMA effort, the heavy reliance on pre-taped bits to make us care the most obvious comparison. I remember back then watching a bit where the QB of the Las Vegas Outlawz flirted with cheerleaders in front of a board of X’s and O’s and wondered if the people responsible for this were as high as I was. They must have been, and they must have been smoking the same shit mexican brick weed over at CBS when they decided that they shouldn’t focus on the effing fights, but should make sure that we know that some guy who got popped and crumpled to the ground after fifty seconds is known as the “New York Badass.” I’m embarrassed for my state. Do they think that a little bit of background and some choice quotes make an athletic legend that is beloved even as he beats the crap out of someone else? Obviously not, but it is a basic mistake that the sports world makes because they truly think we care about personality. We only care about performance.
Barry Bonds didn’t get booed during every away game because he was a cheater, he got booed because he performed. Look at what happened to Jason Giambi. He was smashing home runs, suspected of cheating, and was then the subject of ridicule and investigation. Now that he’s batting closer to .200, we don’t really care at all. This is also why baseball managed to survive the embarrassment of the Mitchell Report - so many players were average, struggling, blue collar guys that the whole world, after about ten minutes, offered a collective yawn. This is the lesson that all fringe sports need to learn: you have to make the sport exciting and cut all the bullshit. If MMA is ever going to succeed, it can’t rely on name recognition and funny anecdotes, it has to give us fights that are mind-blowingly awesome. Lose the live broadcast, no one gives a shit. I’d take an hour of wall to wall fighting instead of two loose, live hours. MMA can talk and talk all it wants about how high caliber its athletes are and about how beautiful and brutal its fights can be but it’s not worth a good god damn. Just show the fight and let the fists speak for themselves.
