Continued from Part 1

MMA wasn’t like this. Yeah, people cheered and there were shouts for blood, but it was more like watching an action movie at a theater where yelling at the screen is socially acceptable. It was all just… entertainment.

I think part of this might be due to the fact that MMA is actually fairly safe, and people who watch the sport know this. According to the event’s promoter, Chris Wiatt, in all eight previous Cagefests they’ve never had an injury greater than a concussion.

“There’s only been two deaths in the history of the sports,” he explained from ringside. He paused to hand one of the newly bruised fighters a check. “And that was a long time ago. They changed the rules since then. It’s a lot safer than boxing.”

There might be a tendency in a story like this for the writer to ask: Just what does this say about us as humans? But I won’t do that here because it says absolutely nothing. Crowds have been watching men fight since evolution or God granted us sentience. Maybe we hope somebody gets hurt for subconscious Darwinian reasons: because one less man in the world means increased access to resources and potential mates for the rest of us. But the point is, this is nothing new. We don’t cheer for blood at these events because of the media or video games or some other bullshit a conservative will try to tell you. We fight, and we watch these fights, because it is who we are. Plain and simple.

***

Scott Monish

When I went back to the locker room I made my biggest mistake of the night: I introduced myself to Lights Out’s opponent, a freckle-faced kid from North Carolina named Scott Monish.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked him.

“I’m a fighter,” he said. “And I’m getting married on Friday. It’ll be nice to have the extra money.”

Married!? On Friday?!?!

“It’ll be just my style, to get married with a shiner,” said Monish, who had blue eyes as fragile as Faberge eggs and tousled hair a mother couldn’t help but lick her thumb and comb. “I’m joining the Army after the wedding so the fight doesn’t matter too much anyway.”

I asked him how much he was making for the fight.

“Three hundred bucks,” he said. “And another three hundred if I win.”

***

Eventually all the other fighters had gone and it was only Lights Out and his crew in the locker room. The ground was littered with white athletic tape, ice buckets, towels, and empty containers of Vaseline. The room smelled like sweat and the air was humid. Lights Out had his head phones on. Finally, it was time.

Lights Out had all the advantages: speed, power, intensity. He was also fighting not exactly for his life, but to make a life of this. Winning this fight was forging an identity; it was fulfilling a metamorphosis from a kid that fought because he had to to a man that fights for a living. As he prowled around Scott Monish, Lights Out Sheppard was regaining a part of himself.

As for Monish, he was fighting to pay for the DJ and the cost of dinner for some cousins at his wedding. There was no way to compare.

Part of me wanted to find a way to stop the fight. Really, what’s the point? What’s it all worth? A few hundred bucks? That sweet freckled face… the wedding pictures… the forever that is the rest of their lives, that forever that will last so much longer than the length of the fight…

It was clear within seconds and a few vicious blows that Monish had zero chance of winning. It was, as they say, only a matter of time.

Then Monish did one of the braver things I have ever witnessed: he kept fighting. He kept fighting even in the face of three eventualities, and only three: being knocked-out, being pressed to call mercy, or if the referee feared that Monish was in such impending physical danger that the crowd should be silenced, the concessions shut, but first the fight must be stopped without further ado.

All alone, lost.

Monish kept fighting, and by keeping fighting he experienced a feeling of Manliness I know I probably never will. He raised his knees to protect his ribs and vital organs. He hugged Lights Out’s arms so that they could not swing. Of course soon enough Lights Out broke loose and regained space. He swung and he swung and then there was the spine-tingling crack of bone on bone. Monish went down and laid on his back and was punched until the referee intervened. The crowd let out a final cry that was like a bird of prey after snatching a fish from the water.

And then Monish knelt on the ground, bloody, alone, in the ecstasy of survival.

To watch a mini-mini doc about the fight, click here.