A UFC kinda of question

By Scott Keith on June 13, 2012

Scott, here is a question that may interest you:
I have been lucky enough as a wrestling fan to have been to a lot of really great (and not so great) wrestling shows (say, ranging from the best indie fed only about 250 people knew about to Royal Rumble 2000, Wrestlemania 20, more ECW shows that I can remember from 1998-2001, and some CM Punk & Bryan Danielson ROH moments that were just as incredible live as they are now retrospectively)- a lot of these shows were epic- as were the emotions and pops they produced. If I can look back objectively on the shows I've experienced I can name you the top pop/emotion from a live perspective:
1) Cactus Jack kicks out of the Pedigree, before the final pedigree on thumbtacks @ Royal Rumble 2000: Hands down, by far, of the dozens of shows I've been to and moments I've "witnessed" this was unreal. Strangers spontaneously high-fiving unreal. Aside from the emotionally driven angle leading to the match, the amazing match they put on, and just how badly NY wanted Mick to win one- this was also right at the height of the per-invasion love affair we all had with the product, and it absolutely showed. Mick should have really let himself win that one; in retrospect, who cares?
2) Wrestlemania 20: Yeah, that. Well, it was fun at the time.
3) Tito Ortiz hooks a guillotine choke on Rashad Evans in their rematch following Tito's explosive underdog win over Ryan Bader @ a local packed Applebees: Yeah, seriously, I wasn't there. And here is when it becomes a UFC question– This Applebees exploded when Tito hooked the choke on Rashad because it actively served as a "hope spot" which in wrestling-thinking became the culmination of the moment every Tito fan absolutely wanted (and, you know the way MMA works; in that moment anyone who could rightfully call themselves a fan of the sport was a Tito Ortiz fan)- I have never heard a restaurant get so loud, furthermore, I have never screamed for that prolonged of a period in public. It was the most beautiful real kind of emotion that wrestling can come very close to but never BE. These two guys- gay guys- were sitting next to me; I only want to point out that they were gay (they were VERY chatty and VERY cool) because they must be the first flamboyantly gay hardcore MMA fan couple ever, right? How do I know how hardcore they were? When Tito finally succumbed to Evans in the final frames of the fight, the two who had been running up a drink tab, took out wads of cash and change from their pockets, didn't bother to look or count or anything, slammed it against the bar and stormed out. It was that fucking REAL.
So, would you say when UFC gets it right, ultimately only, say 50% of the time on accident, that the moments they produce are inherently more emotionally resonant?

I guess it depends on who you're invested in. I don't tend to take sides in my UFC viewing outside of when Brock Lesnar was fighting, so the Tito-Evans match didn't have much impact on me. I was screaming my head off during Brock-Carwin, though, I'll tell you that. In the same way, few matches in wrestling produced the gut-punch that Punk-Cena became at Money In the Bank, when I was mentally yelling DON'T FUCKING TAP! DON'T FUCKING TAP! every time Cena would get the STF on. That was a TENSE match, and the ending was resonant for me because I was like "Shit, now I can breathe again." I guess it boils down to the old Dennis Miller joke: "Nothing is more fascinating to me than my orgasm, and nothing is less fascinating to me than your orgasm."

Comments are disable in preview.