MMA Tourney.

Most of you have questioned some items on my 30 before 30 list, and this next item definitely falls under that category.  Attending an MMA fight somehow made it onto my list-maybe it was seeing 'Warrior', maybe it's my secret desire to watch people bleed, at any rate an MMA tournament went down last Friday night at the Copernicus Theater in Chicago, and I was there to witness it.  Fearing for my safety (because those crazy fighters are likely to jump out of the cage and attack me at will) and due to the lack of interest my friends had of attending with me, my 62 year old Father joined me.  


I'll get to the actual fight in a minute, but my Dad was a particular highlight of the evening.  Dressed in pressed khaki pants, loafers, a pale lemon yellow checked button down under a cornflower blue cotton sweater, my Dad could not have looked more out of place.  Walking around the lobby munching on a slice of pizza and drinking a plastic cup of Polish beer, we must have been quite the sight.


When we eventually found our seats through the tattooed highly stylized crowd, the action began.  From our mezzanine seats we had a bit of trouble seeing some of the finer points of the fight, so we both whipped out our iPhones and looked up magnifying glass apps (me) and opera glasses apps (my Dad).  Neither of these really worked out, so we settled in for the series of fights.  This is what went down in mostly every fight:

• Classy young women in maximum coverage hot pants and bras flash the round number to the crowd.
• Fighter swaggers down the aisle to the cage on stage to his personal fight song, followed by his giant posse of handlers, coaches and sponsors.
• The next fighter follows suit, and they meet in the cage.
• They kick, punch, and hold each other on the ground until someone taps out.  Highlights at this stage: someone got punched in the head and bled all over himself, the other guy and the cage.  In another round, a guy had to try standing up four times before he actually made it.
• The winner does a little fist pump, jumps on the cage, or something similar, and hugs it out with the loser.
• The emcee acts really interested in the winner and ask all sorts of fascinating questions.
• The winner does a shout out to his sponsors, and a group of meat heads somewhere in the audience whoops it up.
• Repeat.

We left a little early to beat the parking lot traffic, and my Dad gave me one last amusing anecdote before he drove off in his Mercedes.  As he's trying to back out of his space, he realizes the car behind him is a little close.  This necessitates a little maneuvering.  Three young guys offer their assistance as my Dad Austin Powers' his way to freedom.  I giggle as I rock out to indie beats on 93XRT.

Lessons learned: MMA tournaments are not terribly interesting or exciting, but attending any event with my Dad is enormously humorous.