Ultimate Fighting is Cool

Yesterday my wife informed me that some new friends from our new church here in New Mexico had invited us over to hang out with them and some other couples. I thought, "Cool, sounds good". Then my wife told me that the main attraction of the night was pay per view Ultimate Fighting Championship. I thought, "What the heck?! What kind of church is this anyway, and how are these people that I thought were reasonable, doing inviting us over to watch a glorified version of cockfighting?" (which by the way is legal in New Mexico).

Kim is the last person that I thought would be down to view this visceral display of sheer manliness, but since we are eager to meet new friends we got a babysitter and it was on. Kim and I went out for a brief dinner and as we were leaving she said, "Don't you think we should bring some beer?" As this point I didn't really know what had gotten into my wife, but I was pleasantly surprised that she was diving, head first, into "man world". Heck yes, we needed to get some beer.

Armed with our six pack of Killians Red my wife and I headed over to our friends place to witness the blood thirsty smackdown. When we got there we had some brief conversations and munchies and then it was time to the Main Event of the evening. To be honest I was kind of nervous to watch this crazy spectical, but kind of excited at the same time. Is it ok for church people to watch Ultimate Fighting? (Mark Driscoll thinks it is) Isn't this some sort of 21st century version of gladiator fighters?

The first match was between these two little 140 pound dudes. It lasted about 10 seconds. One dude cold-cocked the other one square in the face and he was out. Match over as quick as that. Now my interest was really peeked and amazingly enough I think the same was true of my wife. We watch a few more matches, but everyone said that the best match would be the main event between UFC legend, Matt Hughes and BJ Penn. I think by this time in the night both my wife and I had become fans of this new naughty sport.



The main event lived up to the hype. Matt Hughes looked like a rugged farm boy from my home state of Iowa, (interestingly, enough, in doing a bit of research this morning, I found out that Matt almost become a collegiante wrestler for my alma mater, The University of Northern Iowa) and his opponent, BJ Penn was a rather unimpressive looking Hawaiin guy. When the match started, the Hawaiin guy, BJ Penn clearly had the upper hand. Basically this guy is a ninja. It was crazy to see the moves that his guy with this cat like reflexes and amazing flexibility. Farm boy, Matt Hughes was basically on the recieving end of an old fashioned beat down. This went on for about two rounds and in round three new favorite ninja was totally out of gas. It was Matt's time to shine and he did. He got this poor dude in some sort of funky hold where his hands where pinned down and Matt proceded to mercilessly pummel him in the face. At that point the referee had to call it and Matt was the champ. But this still was not the best part...



After the match, Matt was interviewed by Joe Rogan (of Fear Factor) and armed with this cheesy Christian t-shirt, (AMRY logo, saying "army of one") he was quick to give all praise and glory to Jesus Christ for the vicious man rage that he just displayed in the thorough butt kicking that he inflicted upon his opponent. Classic.

My wife and I left feeling educated and for some odd reason, kind of pumped up. It was not as bloody or gorey as I had imagined. Basically it's a wierd mix of kickboxing, martial arts, and traditional wresting. To be sure, the guys that are good are amazing athletes.

Can one do ultimate fighting for the glory of God? Not sure about that one yet, but it sure was entertaining.