There are nights when, as a writer, I wish the first rule of "Fight Club" was a commandment that could not be flouted. If it was, I wouldn't have to write about the Royce Gracie vs. Ken Shamrock Bellator 149 main event as if it mattered in any meaningful way. The fight was a bad idea at its inception; the in-cage quality was just as poor.
For the record, the 49-year-old Gracie won via controversial TKO at 2:22 of the first round, marking the first knockout of a career that spans over two decades. The result hardly matters. This experiment of what essentially boils down to a seniors division needs to end.
Gracie entered the cage looking old and doughy, didn't bother taping his hands for the fight and only got the win after dropping the 52-year-old Shamrock with an illegal low blow. Referee Jacob Montalvo did not see the knee land below the belt, and Shamrock basically collapsed to the ground and ate a few hammerfists before the bout was stopped.
It wasn't particularly compelling, convincing or even competitive, and Gracie, who at least has kept his hitman bearing after all these years, was wholly unmoved by the controversy.
"I was telling Ken, 'We come from an era of no time limit, no weight division, no gloves, no rules," he said in the post-fight press conference. "Groin shots were allowed. But it did not catch his groin."
His opponent (and the replay) said otherwise, and an angry Shamrock exploded after the stoppage, screaming at Gracie, "You did it on purpose" multiple times as his corner and commission members pulled him away.
Shamrock eventually calmed himself and apologized for the outburst, but after spending the week explaining his long-held grudge, you best believe that the fight accomplished nothing except to possibly set up yet another match between them.
"In my opinion it's not over," Shamrock said in the post-fight press conference. "I wouldn't want to win that way. If I hit somebody in the nuts and I knew I hit them in the nuts, I would say sorry and give him his time, his five minutes to recover. That's what I would have done."
The inconclusive finish served as a fitting ending to a bizarrely entertaining but ultimately embarrassing event.
I am just kind of sad now. #Bellator149
— The Spartan (@EliasTheodorou) February 20, 2016
Just when you thought it could not get any more bizarre.
— Mike Constantino (@AMAFightClub) February 20, 2016
If there was one MMA event Hunter S. Thompson (RIP) should have covered, it was Bellator 149.
— Steven Marrocco (@MMAjunkieSteven) February 20, 2016
There was always a possibility the night would go like this. Shamrock and Gracie entered the cage at a combined age of 102 years old, and without a single win between them in the last five years.
Below them on the card was a fight between 42-year-old Kimbo Slice and 38-year-old Dhafir "Dada 5000" Harris, a street fighter who had never before competed in major MMA, and who had looked out of his element in the two pro fights he had. Somewhat predictably, he managed to put on possibly the worst striking display ever seen in major MMA.
The fight started out slow, turning sloppy before veering into total absurdity, so much so that at some point, it completely transformed into comedy. By the end, a fatigued Dada was wobbling and teetering wildly, clearly ready to be knocked out, except for the fact that Slice did not have the energy reserves to finish the job. Finally, after Slice swung and missed a few haymakers, Dada basically stumbled and collapsed into a TKO by exhaustion.
The upshot of this, which mostly gets forgotten in the cheap laughs generated, is that these are men risking their health to do this. The sport is dangerous enough for healthy and conditioned athletes; there should be no place for glorified weekend warriors at the highest levels.
If you have any kind of objective tendencies, you have to ask yourself, what is the end game here? You cannot continue to raise sunken ships and expect bigger numbers to climb aboard.
This kind of card can work on one condition: when you are using it to shine a light on your next generation. But curiously, this was a tentpole event without any youth featured. It was just a ratings ploy, plain and simple.
In that way, it probably succeeded. The fight had huge social media engagement, at one point hitting the top spot of Twitter's worldwide trends. That's nice, but will the chatter matter past Friday night? Did Bellator make any long-term fans, or was it the night's punchline?
What the Bellator and Spike executives thought of the whole night, we do not know. When they were asked in the post-fight press conference if this was the kind of event they wanted to continue delivering to the world, Bellator president Scott Coker deferred to Spike senior vice president Jon Slusser, who offered a generic answer about producing entertaining events.
Entertaining? Yes, that is definitely one way to characterize it, albeit not the most accurate one. It was, as I described before the event, a circus.
And as anyone who has ever been to the circus knows, when you bring the show to town, it is usually fun, but there is always manure left behind.
