The game played by cowboys and kingpins, Texas Hold ‘Em became the next big thing in sport, even though it had nothing to do with sports. Still, I defy any one who watches the televised matches to say they don’t get a thrill when the river card is turned and a sure thing becomes anything but.
As popular as poker is, it too failed to break through the clutter of network nonsense that continued to promote the metrosexual lifestyle or, as I previously mentioned, the “men-are-stupid-so-lets-pity-them” claptrap. The game, though, promoted a lifestyle many of us could never attain. Big money, beautiful women, hard liquor and beefy cigars just did not fit our reality.
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This takes us back to MMA.
I’m not sure when mixed martial arts reached the tipping point but it has managed to break through, cutting right to the core of many of our basic emotions and instincts. I preface this by admitting I’m no psychologist, nor do I have any training in that discipline, but one can reasonably argue that aggression and fear can certainly be considered among men’s core emotions.
In the octagon, both of those play out in the heat of the battle. The fear of getting the crap kicked out of you by an opponent bigger than you and the aggression of making sure you beat the crap out your opponent first. This works well in prison and, coincidentally, inside a UFC cage.
As I said, I’m not Freud so here’s what I found doing some research into aggression based on a hypothesis by an Austrian zoologist by the name of Conrad Lorenz:
" ... men's violent instincts are normally expressed in a socially approved way in the modern world, for example through sport. It is the failure to find such expression that leads to undesirable aggressive acts".
So, men have pent-up aggressions (probably from drinking too many Zima’s) and find a way to channel it. Some guys’ sign up to the UFC, most of us just watch it and a very small segment of the male population rob banks. I won’t make any excuses for those guys.
Regardless, MMA is here to stay. It’s getting primetime play on CBS and selling out arenas faster than many “legitimate” sporting leagues. Sure, the metrosexual male is still out there and there’s still some who try to sell us on the idea that men are Cro-Magnons, whose low sloping foreheads can’t fully appreciate the value of a day at the museum or having an engaging dialogue with a member of the opposite sex.
It’s becoming less and less worse, though. We can do those things AND hoot and holler while watching UFC or any other mixed martial arts event. Advertisers are catching on and are no longer selling us short.
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While visiting the in-laws recently, my brother-in-law, who is 21, called me up to his room the other day to watch some MMA event that was on TV. And as I looked around at the empty beer bottles, the open bags of stale chips and pictures of women with impossible breasts tacked to the wall, we laughed at the cartoon-like violence on the screen.
We were guys and we had fun.
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