When apples pummel oranges

Watching Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) on Solar Sports Plus recently, I kept thinking of those Mexican wolf midgets. You know, the ones in Nacho Libre – the Jack Black comedy about lucha libre wrestling in Mexico. Black and his sidekick Esqueleto pair off against a tag team of fierce, wolf-faced dwarves who leap upon them from the ropes, snarling and biting. The movie’s pretty funny, but it’s a fairly accurate take on the wildness of Mexican professional wrestling. Anything goes in lucha libre. And so it goes, too, in the UFC.

The dudes who face each other in the UFC Octagon don’t have wolf features, but they definitely play for keeps. Ultimate Fighting is the American division of Mixed Martial Arts, an action-packed, bloody spectacle that has been sweeping Japan since the 1990s. You know it’s arrived, because there’s already a PlayStation version of it.

Part wrestling, part boxing, part martial arts, Ultimate Fighting, as its name implies, is about pairing off different styles of human combat in an arena. Sometimes weight makes a difference, sometimes style; the main thing is, you never know if ju-jitsu is going to trounce strikefighting, if wrestling moves will defeat kickboxing. It’s apples and oranges out there. Or apples pummeling oranges, I guess.

In lucha libre, wrestlers don masks and become national heroes. The worst thing an opponent can do is remove your mask in the ring. In fact, some wrestlers are even buried in their masks – that’s how important pageantry and mystery is to the sport. Ultimate Fighting is a bit more real: gone are the bogus psychodramas, the ridiculous characters and circus atmosphere of the World Wrestling Federation. No, it’s more about getting people from various backgrounds, histories and fighting strategies into a "cage" (actually, an octagon surrounded by chain-link fencing) and seeing who can draw the most blood, do the most damage, in 15 minutes.

And why exactly do guys like watching this stuff? It’s hard to say why males are drawn to bloodsports. Something primal, I suppose. There is the "sport" aspect, of course: we want to see who’s tougher, more skilled, in an actual, no-holds-barred competition. But I suspect there’s something of the Jackass allure to it, too: guys enjoy Jackass because it makes us smile, on some level, to realize there are people out there willing to subject themselves to pain. Sometimes, stupid pain.

Despite the old UFC tagline ("There are no rules!") the "Laws of the Octagon" are spelled out pretty clearly at the beginning of the show. They are as follows:

• No biting

• No fish hooking (I’m not sure what fish hooking is, but it doesn’t sound pleasant.)

• No eye gouging

• No head butting

• No hair pulling

• No groin strikes

• No small-joint manipulation

• No pressure-point strikes

• No elbows to the back of head or neck

• No kicking when a man is down.

Other than that, everything else is pretty much on the menu.

A recent show I caught featured a warm-up match in Yokohama Arena between a 280-pound American who resembled a bear with a goatee and a 220-pound Japanese "submission specialist."

The bear won, simply by advancing across the mat on his opponent, who gave out a series of ineffectual sidekicks until the bear basically flopped down on top of him, pinning him to the floor with his massive coconut head and then slowly pummeling him until blood spurted from his lips.

The bear – Tank Abbott, a California-based "pitfighter" whose résumé includes statements like "nobody can inflict pain in as many ways as I can" – won after the 15 minutes were up, but it was a slow victory: no knockouts in this UFC match. Japanese opponent Yoji Anjo seemed woozy, but was still standing at the end, albeit somewhat bloodied.

While Japan is the center of Mixed Martial Arts – which grew out of a disenchantment with professional Japanese wrestling – UFC matches are held anywhere: Brazil, Canada, Britain, Las Vegas, Korea, even Mexico. The "cage" resembles a kind of city alleyway – padded fencing encircles the fighters. Instead of bulky boxing mitts, they wear thin leather gloves that ensure knuckle contact. Ouch.

Another thing about watching UFC, it can be a bit slower than professional boxing. There are only two rounds, 12 minutes followed by an additional three. Often, once someone is pinned to the mat, very little real action takes place, unless there’s an armbar or leglock reversal. Basically, you just watch one fighter beat the crap out of the other. So there are fewer bathroom or snack breaks.

But there are upsets in Ultimate Fighting, and this comes down to mixing fighting styles. Unlike boxing, where two fighters with similar weight classes and comparable skills often equal predictable results, there is the thrill of the unexpected. Odds makers must have a hell of a time laying bets; nobody really knows who will come out on top.

It was STAR artist Rene Aranda who pointed out the UFC to me. He noted it really does take skills and discipline to win. In one match with Filipino fighters held at Araneta, he said the opponent you thought likely to win – the scrappy streetfighter who was hungrier than his semi-professional opponent – was quickly overtaken by the fighter who had actual training and skills. And the thing is, a fighter will most likely stick to what he knows – if he specializes in elbow strikes, then that’s his calling card. If it’s armbars and leg reversals, that’s what he’ll bring to the table. A ju-jitsu master won’t suddenly switch to bear hugs; they don’t call them "specialists" for nothing.

So, like Ignacio, the Jack Black character in Nacho Libre, the Ultimate Fighters bring something else to professional fighting than costumes and theatrics: they bring body and soul. This is what’s left after Fight Club, after pay-per-view heavyweight boxing matches that last less than two minutes, and after WWF has descended into a Looney Tunes marathon. It’s not flashy, it’s not pretty. But it just may be the kick in the ass that professional fighting needs.