London, July 08: Take two muscled, tattooed up men, stick them in a cage and let them fight. Add music, outrageous outfits and glamour girls and you’ve got an unbeatable audience pleaser.
Cage Rage may have a wild reputation, but as it’s going mainstream, the question is: Is this sport or entertainment?
Ask any of the fighters gathered at London’s Wembley Arena for the latest Cage Rage event, and the answer is plain, this is a sport, which, like any other, requires specific skills and hours of training.
Which ever the definition may be, with 8000 seats sold for the Cage Rage event at the Wembley Arena, it is clear that Europe has been hit by Cage Rage craze.
“Everybody wants to be ‘a cage fighter’, it’s cool to be ‘a cage fighter’, I want to go out with ‘a cage fighter’,” explains Cage Rage promoter Andy O’Donnell [they mean Dave O'Donnell - MMAU ed]. “But you know they’re just normal guys. They’ve been doing it all their life. They are mixed martial artists or trained artists that fight for a living that’s all they do, but of course the cage is a big, ‘it’s a cage fight’,” he adds.
With the intriguing title comes a common belief that Cage Rage is a no-rules punch-fest, equal to a wild street fight. But like any sport, Cage Rage comes with a set of rules – and a code of conduct between its practitioners.
“There are rules, there are thirty rules and they’re very well enforced, so you can’t head-butt, you can’t eye-gouge because you want all the fighters to fight again next month, so you don’t want any permanent long term damage. And there’s a code of conduct between fighters, we’re not going to deliberately damage an opponent, you have the opportunity to tap out, to surrender if you will, but there’s no shame in that because it happens to everyone,” explains Dave “The Enforcer” Legeno.
O’Donnell too, is quick to point out Cage Rage is far from violent street fighting: “I know you want me to say ‘It’s really nasty, it’s brutal’, but it’s not. It’s, it’s, it can be brutal if you get a mix of matches, ie: two goldfish, fantastic fight. Two sharks, fantastic fight. Goldfish shark – there’s going to be brutality. But I match make a lot of the fight – there’s never that, you know, it’s always an equal match,” he said.
For the 42-year-old Legeno, Cage fighting offers an opportunity to combine his wrestling and boxing skills with his acting talent. ‘The Enforcer’, who has appeared in films including ‘Snatch’ and ‘Batman Begins’ says Cage Rage is more than anything, an entertaining sport.
“I’m not the best fighter in the world but I’m probably one of the best entertainers in the world because along with all the fighting, we come in, we’ve got girls, we’ve got music, we’ve got entrances, we’ve got the excitement of world class wrestling and the characters involved and then there’s a real fight – a more exciting fight than a boxing match,” he told.
Cage Rage is the engaging title for Mixed Martial Arts, a term used to describe a mixture of all the martial arts.
The sport was introduced to the world by the Gracies, a large, extended family from Brazil, who challenged traditional martial artists with their individual fighting style – the Gracie Challenge. With a U.S. television company picking up the Gracie challenge, Cage Rage quickly went from local to global.
The sport has become a big hit in Japan and the United States, making big stars of the most successful fighters.
“The top level MMA fighters are millionaires, many time over. This is, like I say, it’s a very big sport. I’m still surprised when I come across people who’ve never heard of it. You know, there are far more MMA bouts taking place than there are boxing bouts,” explains promoter Andy Geer.
But is the prize money worth the pain? Cage fighter Robert ‘Buzz’ Berry says money comes only second to the good – legal – fighting.
“Sure, the money’s a bonus, it’s extra, and it’s nice where you can come and have a fight without getting into trouble with the police. So yes, I enjoy my fighting and it is a bonus, don’t get me wrong, it d s help,” he said.
And with the huge audience turn out in London, it is clear that it is not just the fighters, but the public, too, who enjoy the fighting.
