ULTIMATE FIGHTING IS NEW KING OF THE RING

There was a time when people looking for sports entertainment would go to boxing matches.  In the old days, the fights would be "bare knuckles", and a rash of injuries led to reforms in the sport which included the wearing of padded gloves.  Injuries were diminished, but some people resented the changes.

Boxing matches traditionally have attracted large audiences and huge revenue from betting and sponsorships.  Then, during the 60s, a young man named Cassius Clay took on the name Mohammed Ali and flaunted his electrifying persona to become the biggest name in sports.  During the Ali Era, boxing enjoyed a renaissance that endured until the "bad boys" came in.  This new breed of boxer had nowhere near the class of Ali and resorted to public violent outbursts to hype the matches.  It all led to a decline in interest.

On the reverse side of the coin is professional wrestling.  A stepchild of circus and carnival hawking, pro wrestling was considered boring by many fans because the "scientific" style required holds that sometimes lasted too long for the action-hungry crowds.  In order to give the sport a shot in the arm, the matches became scripted from beginning to end.  In the beginning and until fairly recently, the powers that be in wrestling vehemently denied the scripting, but too many people found out about it, so they no longer even try to hide it, even revealing that they have story development writers.  This has brought pro wrestling the nickname "soap opera on steroids".

Pro wrestling came to be known as "sports entertainment" when a number of state athletic commissions refused to sanction the scripted matches as pure sport.  A major news story that revealed the widespread misuse of drugs in wrestling gave the sport a black eye, and the recent deaths of several prominent wrestlers have further tarnished its image.

In the 70s and 80s, a new form of "squared circle" fighting emerged.  It was called the Tough Guy Competition, and it involved regular Joes, sometimes with little or no training, who went into the ring to beat the living daylights out of each other.

The Tough Guy variety of fighting was exciting because you never knew what you'd see.  It could be a wrestler going up against a karate expert, or a boxer fighting a man who just thought he was the toughest guy in the world.  The results were just as unpredictable.

Tough Guy fighting needed to evolve to survive too, and it did.  Promoters organized the fights and leaned toward athletes who had trained for grappling in one or more forms.  Schools were started to train the fighters, and the sport took on a new name, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).  As its popularity soared, the matches began showing up occasionally on television, bringing in even more fans.

Today we have the International Fighting League and Ultimate Fighting as the major divisions, and the two have begun a merge similar to professional wrestling's, which may soon lead to a single entity simply known as Ultimate Fighting.

Like Mexican and TNN wrestling, MMA matches are fought in an unconventional-shaped ring--an octagonal cage without a top, made of wire.  The combattants wear very lightly padded gloves, and can do pretty much anything to beat each other into submission, except for biting and low blows.

Recently, MMA's pay per view shows have outsold both wrestling and boxing, and most events are sellouts.  A card held at Anaheim, California's Honda Center sold out the venue in less than 15 minutes.  The sport is doing a booming business and has even spawned a reality show on the Spike network based on the lives and training of the fighters.

Where boxing and wrestling used to look over their shoulders and saw MMA as a distant competitor, they now have to look ahead and plan new strategies to catch up on Ultimate Fighting, a task that may very well have become impossible.