![]() To repress death is to lose the feeling of life, he writes. A professor of English literature and a lifelong student of the macabre, Wilson believes there's something nourishing in darkness. Wilson sets out to discover the source of our attraction to the gruesome, drawing on the findings of biologists, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, and artists. What makes these spectacles so irresistible? In Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck, the scholar Eric G. But we're still compelled to look whenever we pass a grisly accident on the highway, and there's no slaking our thirst for gory entertainments like horror movies and police procedurals. Dark fantasies, morbid curiosities, Schadenfreude: as conventional wisdom has it, these are the symptoms of our wicked side, and we succumb to them at our own peril. Something tells me, especially after Friday night, the news won’t come as a surprise to Bellator executives.įor more on Bellator 138, check out the MMA Events section of the site.Whether we admit it or not, we're fascinated by evil. Maybe it’s time to admit that about ourselves. We’re the people who will absolutely watch a man in his 50s get his head split open by a backyard brawler, if only so we can join together to roll our eyes as one. It’s going to slide the good stuff in between the weird stuff – then watch the ratings climb as we tune in to fights we can’t look away from. It’s going to give us what we’ve proven what we want, and not just what we claim to want. That’s the stuff we’ll swallow only if you promise us Tito Ortiz or Kimbo Slice as a reward.īellator seems to have a handle on that aspect of our identity now, and it’s not going to let go. The good stuff, like fights between legit up-and-comers whose names we haven’t quite learned yet? Those are the vitamins you have to sneak into our cupcakes. Just as often, though, what we want is pure entertainment, even if it comes draped in irony and appeals to our collective misremembered past. We think we want this to be a sport and not a spectacle. We think we want to see the best fighters in the world. Bellator seems to have figured out something important about us, namely that we are not necessarily who we think we are. The wild part is, it’s probably going to work. These are the actions of an organization that wants to sell tickets and jack up TV ratings. These are not the actions of an organization that wants to be known as the one and only home for elite combat sports. A one-night, four-man light heavyweight tournament? A 205-pound title fight including Tito Ortiz, in the year 2015? A mix of MMA and kickboxing, with head-trauma enthusiasts like Paul Daley and Joe Schilling on tap? Judging by the big announcement from current Bellator President Coker during Friday’s event, that’s the strategy the Viacom-owned organization will employ going forward. Once they’re there, they also see some real fighters doing real stuff, even if they almost have to be tricked into sitting through it. ![]() The current Bellator model seems to rely on this weirdness, while staking not quite everything on it. You’d have to be an idiot to take this stuff too seriously, but when viewed over the top of the Twitter app with a box of wine or case of beer nearby, it’s the guiltiest of pleasures. It’s like the MMA version of a Lifetime Original Movie. ![]() You also see people who were not about to miss this fight, not for anything, and who clearly had something resembling a good time watching it. You look around the MMA-specific social media accounts of note, and you see much mockery being made of Kimbo and Shamrock. As for Slice, his MMA game is still a constant argument to determine which is worse: his takedown defense or his jiu-jitsu?īut while it’s incredibly easy to make fun of a Spike TV main event like this, it’s not so easy to just skip it entirely. The nicest thing you can say about Shamrock is that he looks good (kind of suspiciously so) for a 51-year-old man. The UFC wants to bill itself as the place where the best fight the best? Fine, Bellator will be the destination for the stuff we can’t deny we want to see, even if we’re a little ashamed to admit it. Under the leadership of former Strikeforce head Scott Coker, that also seems to be Bellator’s new company motto. We’re here to entertain, these entrances said, one way or another. However you might have felt about Friday’s Bellator 138 main event going in, the work both men did before they even took their shirts off went a long way toward establishing expectations. Kevin “ Kimbo Slice” Ferguson walked out to a Drake song as his old street fight highlights flashed across the two big screens behind him. Ken Shamrock entered with a live singer, one member of an old pro wrestling tag team, and what appeared to be escapees from a local daycare.
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