Fight Nite

Though shameful to admit, I must confess to the fact that I had no idea the popularity of dog-fighting until the Michael Vick drama began to unfold. I’ve never seen a real-live dog fight and the only organized animal on animal contest I’ve ever witnessed was a cock fight. It seemed to be over before it began and I didn’t have any money on it so to me the whole affair was about as exciting as watching someone whack a down sleeping bag with a garden rake. I don’t get the animal fighting thing. It’s not that I’m against finding entertainment in violence – far from it – it’s just that I don’t see much fun in observing any two creatures pummeling each other unless those two creatures happen to have opposable thumbs and a big ol’ sense of self-awareness.
Humans fighting humans has probably been the biggest single source of good times in the history of mankind. You have your gladiators, your jousters, your Tennessee wedding parties, etc. We as a species just love to see our brethren b**** slap our brethren. And, as we have (allegedly) evolved as a species, so to have the styles of combat we consider entertainment. Boxing, Judo, Fencing, are all forms of fighting which have now become formal sports. This is all well and good I suppose, but another recent story got me to thinking.
When I heard the news about John Lovitz and Andy Dick, I immediately began combing the internet for video. I didn’t find any footage of those two knuckle-heads, but I did find plenty other footage of various amateur fisticuffs. And, after extensive research, I now feel confident to put forward this assertion; There is nothing more entertaining than watching two equally matched, equally inexperienced, equally furious human beings going at it toe-to-toe – nothing.
I know there are a lot of Ultimate Fighting fans out there and that’s cool -it seems like there’s more than a couple of folks in that sport with some major screws loose and I do occasionally read about someone getting seriously hurt in the ring or octagon or cage or whatever - but something is definitely missing. Way back before there was Ultimate Fighting, my buddies and I used to shell out big bucks to watch something on pay-per view called shoot-fighting (or was it chute-fighting?). What made these fights so great was the fact that the combatants were mainly washed-up ex-football players and college wrestlers. It was an awesome spectacle of incompetent rage fueled by ego and absurd levels of synthetic testosterone. Now-a-days all you’ve got is a bunch of athletes who train and more often than not know what they’re doing. Boooring! We, as fighting fans have placed way to much importance on skill for way too long.
What we need is an Ultimate Non-fighters Fighting Championship Series. Think about it. How cool would a no-holds-barred Ryan Seacrest vs. Kevin Federline Submission Match be? Those delicate features, those feminine hands… a Slap-Fight Royal!
And there are other match-ups that would be guaranteed cash cows;
Barry Bonds vs. Jose Conseco - More fitting than induction in Cooperstown would be the lasting memory of these two three-hundred-pound base-ball cheatin’ bastards with womens’ breasts beating the tar out of each other until they both collapsed from heart attacks. Ah, sweet justice.
George Bush vs. Richard Simmons – Would easily go down in history as the most dignified act attributable to either one of them.
Adam Sandler vs. Tom Cruise – The idea being that a clash of the two most annoying forces of nature would cancel both out permanently.
Axel Rose vs. Tommy Hilfiger re-match – Though, the inevitable spike in emergency room cases laughter-split sides would have to be planned for.
Alex Rodriquez vs. Derek Jeeter – Admittedly, not very interesting… until the broke down and started French-kissing (and you know they would.)
I have many, many more match-up I would love to see… but it’s getting sort of late in the day and… well, I just now realized this whole bit is pretty weak… sorry.