As UFC has made plenty of strides in the public consciousness over the past few years – to the point where people like my New York Post colleague George Willis and Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole cover it like they do boxing – I’ve held firm in my opposition to sitting down and watching a fight card. While I’m a fan of boxing, that isn’t the reason I haven’t been able to get behind it.
More than anything else, I just couldn’t bring myself to watch it. It seemed less like a sport than like a regulated version of Tyler Durden’s brawls throughout Fight Club. The idea of two guys getting into a cage and, in essence, fighting to the death like Roman gladiators just never appealed to me.
But that changed Saturday night. With UFC 100 being a major landmark for the company, and with it being promoted all across the media landscape, including on SportsCenter, I figured if there ever was a time for me to take a shot on mixed martial arts, this was it.
So I called up my friend Chris, who I knew had at least watched some fights in the past, and we and his friend Christian (a big MMA fan) met up at a local bar to take in the scene. Amidst pitchers of beer and some appetizers, I had a notebook and pen ready, and kept a running log of the events as they unfolded.
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