It was hard to miss the phenomenal level of publicity and hype last week for Saturday's huge, mixed martial arts event at TD Garden in Boston.
Billed as the "Ultimate Fighting Championship," the 10-fight evening showcased a controversial sport that is growing in popularity, participation and acceptance.
At the top levels of the sport, as shown regularly on Spike TV, at pay-per-view locations, and at the Garden Saturday, there is no denying the startling and shocking degree of violence, blood and human injury nakedly on display during some bouts.
Yet at the lower levels of the discipline, in small gyms across the country where the vast majority of the sport's practitioners labor simply to become fit and strong — and will never throw a fist in real combat — training in the martial arts provides the same set of beneficial effects as any other more mainstream sport.
Saturday's championship fights demonstrated both what's best and worst about the sport. The five biggest contests (which I watched in a Boston sports bar) ranged widely in character.
Some were primarily boxing matches, some became wrestling matches, and some blended all the martial arts including jiujitsu, kickboxing, and muay thai.
The first main fight, in which Nate Diaz defeated Marcus Davis, was repulsive. Davis' face was cut bad by Diaz' fists, and it swelled and bled and looked like raw hamburger by the end of the battle.
The rules governing ultimate fighting are few. Opponents are permitted to kick, knee, elbow, and choke-hold each other. As in a street fight, they may also punch each other even when one of them has been knocked down.
Perhaps the most unseemly and brutal aspect of the sport occurs when one fighter savagely and repeatedly pounds the relatively vulnerable face of a fighter who is on his back on the canvas — nearly helpless — and about to succumb. It is an ugly sight.
The Diaz-Davis fight ended in the third round when Davis literally lost consciousness while being choked — legally — by Diaz.
On the other hand, the Penn-Edgar lightweight bout, a rematch between two evenly matched fighters, was notable for the fitness, discipline, skill, and fortitude shown by the men. More chess match than brawl, perhaps it was the lack of blood, physical injury, and exploitation that raised it to something yielding dignity and empowerment for both pugilists.
Nonetheless, with all of the recent research and understanding of what repeated blows to the head can do — with or without actual concussions — it will be hard to defend mixed martial arts if it is found to put its practitioners at risk in the same way that traditional boxing has done.
On Monday I visited the Brazilian Martial Arts Center in Somerville to talk with the owner and head instructor, Marcelo Siqueira, who was the 1994 karate world champion.
I observed all sorts of exercise and skills drills, classes in session, and sparring rounds. Classes are held for young children, teenagers and adults.
Siqueira's gym and its 200 students are far more representative of the world of martial arts than is the "ultimate fighting" which receives more media attention.
Although the gym has a professional "cage" — the gladiator-evoking, fenced octagon in which fighters compete — it is a small minority of martial artists who advance to become serious, fighting amateurs or professionals. Usually, life intervenes in one fashion or another, and the sport's devotees ultimately take many divergent paths.
But before they do, as Siqueira tells me, practicing the martial arts gives many youths a discipline and a purpose that they have never experienced before. Many kids have come to the center from Somerville's nearby "projects," and sometimes it is the framework of dedication to a sport that focuses and mobilizes something in them.
Siqueira says that his school tries to elicit the attributes of sincerity, persistence, self-control, respect, and character, within every student.
The mixed martial arts contests that we see on TV are usually extreme. As this sport continues to expand and mature, I hope that its rules will continue to become more restrictive, and prohibit the injury-producing blows that are currently permitted.
Kids and teenagers are impressionable — and great copycats. Our media and society constantly convey our values to them. When we put the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the Garden, with its no-holds-barred form of pugilism, that style of conflict gets glorified whether we intended it to or not.
There's no easy answer here. No one sport fits all. People come from different worlds and different backgrounds. They need different things, and different things help them.
Ultimate fighting will remain controversial, and rightfully so. Its most savage moments are ignoble. But they represent only one tiny face of a larger and varied sport.
• • •
Brian T. Watson of Swampscott is a regular Salem News columnist. Contact him at watson@nii.net.
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