By Mark La Monica
Like the rest of sporting America, I've heard all the hype of Ultimate Fighting and mixed martial arts and how it's the next big thing, how it's replacing boxing, how it's the most coolest thing ever in the history of cool.
I never bought into it, which as a pop culture blogger, sounds paradoxical. How could I shun "the next big thing among males 18-34?" It's simple, really.
I watched quite a few matches on Spike, whatever they call Channel 3 on Cablevision these days, Pay-Per-View and YouTube, and they all stunk. Just a bunch of clinching and wrapping, with a few punches thrown here and there. Sounds a lot like boxing right now, doesn't it?
But after watching the Roger Huerta-Clay Guida match on Saturday night with Gimpy-knee friend Jitsu, I think I might be able to write this next sentence and believe it. Ultimate Fighting is pretty cool.
Guida reminds of when Ed Gennaro played football. He's a wild man, no, a rampaging beast. Huerta is just as high-energy, but appears more controlled.
These two nutjobs went at it hard for two rounds, with Guida presumably ahead on the scorecards. Then, early in the third round, Huerta caught Guida with a shot to the head, followed it up with more shots, then smacked a choke hold on Guida (MMA's substitute for the WWE's sleeper hold). Just like that, Guida tapped out, lost and became less ultimate than Huerta.
Of course, with a sport such as this, words don't really do it justice. You'll need to watch the match to understand. Peep SpikeTV's Ultimate Fighter site or UFC.com soon. They'll likely have video clips of the fight.
Here's something, though, that can help describe this craze: In an earlier match between Jonathan "War Machine" Koppenhaver and Jared "J-Roc" Rollins, blood flowed like a "Grey's Anatomy" marathon. At the end of the match, Koppenhaver poured a bottle of water over his head and you could see the blood come flowing out of his hair and down his back. Sick. But pretty cool since it wasn't my blood.