Columnist Ron Kantowski: Ultimate Fighting: Few rules, but many fans

Friday, April 2, 2004 | 9:45 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Now that I've witnessed one, I'd have to rank an Ultimate Fighting Championship weigh-in right alongside Pole Day at the Indianapolis 500 and batting practice before a Giants-Cubs game, when Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa are feeling their oats, as the most captivating preliminary events in sports.

At Indy, it's the possibility that somebody might break the track record -- or his neck -- that keeps fans glued to the edge of their seats.

Watching Barry or Sammy launch a batting practice fastball into orbit during BP is kind of cool, because chicks aren't the only ones who dig the longball.

And a UFC weigh-in is almost worth the price of a ringside seat because ... because ...

Well, darned if I know.

What I do now is that more than 2,000 fans were on hand at the Mandalay Bay Events Center to watch Tito Ortiz and Ken Liddell, the main event combatants in tonight's UFC 47 pay-per-view offering, and a bunch of undercard warriors with bulging biceps and washboard abs, one of whom was known as "Cabbage," stand on the scale clad only in way-too-small Jockey shorts.

Upon further review, forget what I said about basketball shorts being too baggy.

By now, you are probably familiar with the UFC story, that it's supposedly on its way to becoming the NASCAR of the new millenium and appears to be here to stay. After all, there have been 46 of these testosteronefests before this one, all of which, I might add, are available on DVD for $29.95 each on the official UFC Web site.

Ultimate fighting is another name for mixed martial arts, some of which, like Karate and Kung Fu, I've heard of or seen in syndication, and others, such as Gracie Jiu-Jutsu, Muay Thai and Jeet Kune Do, that look more like the middle of the Yomiuri Giants' batting order. The big attraction, I'm told, is that it is almost no-holds barred, although there are roughly a page and a half of rules.

Which makes it sort of like hockey.

When the UFC was launched in 1993, there were only two rules, no biting and no eye-gouging, which immediately disqualified Mike Tyson and Moe of the Three Stooges from title consideration.

It wasn't long thereafter that critics began referring to the UFC and its imitators as "human cock fighting," and the hybrid sport was banned in eight states, thereby breaking Oggy Ogelthorpe's record in "Slap Shot." So in an effort to keep the pacifists in check and the cops from raiding the place, the UFC now recognizes 31 fouls, all of which begin with "no."

Some of the more colorfully worded ones are "no groin attacks of any kind" (No. 6), "no putting a finger into any orifice or into any cut or laceration on an opponent" (No. 7), "no clawing, pinching or twisting the flesh" (No. 12), "no spitting at an opponent" (a k a the Bill Romanowski rule, No. 21), "no timidity" (No. 29), "no throwing in the towel" (No. 31), "no grabbing the clavicle" (No. 13) and "no small joint manipulation" (No. 8). The Bob Marley kind isn't covered by the rulebook.

There are just five weight classes, a rule that boxing should consider, and championship bouts consist of five, five-minute rounds, a rule boxing should not consider.

There are eight ways to win, seven of which -- TKO, scorecard decision, technical decision, technical draw, disqualification, forfeit and no contest -- are similar to boxing. The easiest, and least painful, way to to lose is by "tapping out" or submitting to an opponent, which, conversely, hasn't been a part of boxing since Michael Spinks rolled over and played dead against Mike Tyson in 1988.

Based on what I've seen on the pay-per-view ads, the action occurs in spurts, many of which are quite vicious. But, I might add, nowhere near as vicious as the beating I saw Julio Cesar Chavez put on Meldrick Taylor at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1990.

The UFC guys who weighed in Friday looked a lot meaner than Chavez or Taylor or, for that matter, Rutger Hauer, my favorite movie villain. In fact, when one of them caught my eye, a mouse immediately formed under it.

That's why I'm among the minority who believes the UFC is part Hulk Hogan, part Pat Benatar. If these guys truly were hitting each other with their best shots, somebody would get seriously hurt. Or seriously killed.

Put it this way: Old school ultimate fighting -- you know, when two guys adjourned to the alley behind the bar to resolve their differences -- never lasted five minutes, much less five rounds.

So now that I've been exposed to it, at least from a safe distance, I guess ultimate fighting still isn't my cup of tea. But then, I've never seen "Survivor," either.

Anyway, it's not as if the UFC needs my stamp of approval to survive. After the weigh-in, there was a long line at the Mandalay Bay box office, and the guys who were standing there to buy tickets sure didn't look like "Mamma Mia!" fans.