Fight night: my brush with the UFC

At some point, every guy is told that he has to man up. Manning up, of course, can mean any number of things: putting on a suit, shaving with a blade, supporting a family by way of a grim office job, confronting a rival. For me, manning up meant watching UFC 148 at a sports bar two weeks ago. UFC, for the uninitiated, stands for Ultimate Fighting Championship. Its first event was held in 1993, presumably to answer one of the great existential questions of the day: Who would win in a fight — a kickboxer or a sumo wrestler? Matches, as you might imagine, were brutal and bloody. They instantly became the stuff of pay-per-view television legend.

Tito Ortiz
The road to retirement ends here: Tito Ortiz
 

At some point, every guy is told that he has to man up.

Manning up, of course, can mean any number of things: putting on a suit, shaving with a blade, supporting a family by way of a grim office job, confronting a rival. For me, manning up meant watching UFC 148 at a sports bar two weeks ago.

UFC, for the uninitiated, stands for Ultimate Fighting Championship. Its first event was held in 1993, presumably to answer one of the great existential questions of the day: Who would win in a fight — a kickboxer or a sumo wrestler? Matches, as you might imagine, were brutal and bloody. They instantly became the stuff of pay-per-view television legend.

Gradually, though, at least according to Wikipedia, the violence became more muted, and as the matches grew tamer, UFC’s audience swelled. The sport developed its own superstars, current welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre among them, and now the promise of a heavyweight title bout is enough to pack any bar with a television.

And La Station des Sports, the Peter Sergakis-owned sports bar at the corner of Fort and Ste-Catherine, has many televisions.

Popping my UFC cherry
My two friends and I arrived early. I’m not sure who was fighting, but I remember who was drinking: me. Broadcast live from — where else? — Las Vegas, the event’s major bout would see Anderson Silva defend his middleweight championship against Chael Sonnen. Also on the card was a match between veteran MMA bro Tito Ortiz and Forrest Griffin.

The build-up was endless. Much like a WWE wrestling event, a major bout is preceded by a long succession of fights between lower-profile contenders, all of whom walked into the octagon, the UFC’s name for the ring, wearing t-shirts and hats bearing the logos of brands like Tapout and Affliction, the maligned markers of mixed martial arts fandom and fighterdom.

The dudes at the bar, many bedecked in the same labels, cheered as the fighters emerged to the sounds of rap-metal, possibly the most offensive thing about the evening. I resolved that my entrance song, should I ever require one, would be Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like.”

And there I sat for four hours, drinking and observing a parade of meatheads beat the shit out of each other, while other dudes watched, enraptured by the carnage. The bar was packed full of people barely able to contain themselves; they’d jump up, cheering loudly, and pump their fists in approval every time a fighter administered a hard hit or pinned his opponent in a hold. Their girlfriends cheered and smiled.

Sometime toward midnight, or maybe it was 10:30 p.m., Mr. Jenna Jameson, Tito Ortiz, entered the octagon. He lost to Forrest Griffin, but not before the commentator could describe him as “the Huntington Beach bad boy, in his trademark flame shorts.” Ortiz announced his retirement after the bout. To my surprise — and, admittedly, disappointment — it was pre-planned. He and Griffin might as well have gone for a beer afterward.

And then, at long last, came the main event: Silva vs. Sonnen. Silva won, I’d like to think at least in part because Steven Seagal, apparently one of his trainers, was among those who accompanied him to the octagon. Satisfied, the drunken fans spilled out of the bar and onto Ste-Catherine.

A few minutes later, my friends and I stood in front of the Provigo next door. A 20-something dude, clearly strung out, asked us for money before screaming “Yeah! Silva!” and running off, directly into a post on the sidewalk. He was felled, and I was exhausted. ■

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