I was lucky enough to be invited to the Baltimore arena to see the UFC this past Saturday. There is no need for me to cover the fights. I went in to the event as a social study. Let me just give you a brief timeline of the experience.
The event was billed as starting at 6:15.
5:10: Ajay and I arrived at the attached parking garage and were among the last 20 to gain entry before it filled. She assures me that she has trimmed her fingernails so she can fight in case we are attacked.
5:25: We waited in a loose orderly line as a homeless man sold UFC shirts for a variety of prices. Spit flew from his partially toothed mouth as he made his pitch. Ajay cringed next to me as his saliva sprayed the area. I note, that if we are attacked by spitters, I am probably on my own.
5:45: The doors open and we file in past bar stands and a UFC memorabilia stand, where bogus plastic ‘championship’ belts are sold for $400. We later saw two spectators who had purchased belts.
5:50: I notice that one of the brands of 24oz beer being sold for $11.50 is a microbrew, and make the miscalculation of the night, buying one for my date and I. I also grabbed a bag of popcorn for $6.
6:00: Cozy in our seats we sit back to people watch. Unlike the local pro MMA and boxing events this is not a trophy mistress event, but a wife event. Ajay is horrified that I actually find some—well, most actually—of these dubious women attractive, and declares me officially blind. There were about a half dozen prostitutes of good quality, but nowhere near that of the nine model quality babes we spotted at the Shogun event last year. Two striking 40-year-old bleach blonde sluts did catch my eye as they danced for the fat men to my right in the aisle, further eroding my date’s confidence in my taste.
6:45: The UFC has 12 cameras and a crew of techs with a record spinner, busily destroying real music which is all remixed to a monotonous dance beat. Every song of the night [other than the walk-in songs] will be remixed to this same beat. I plugged my ears with cotton and then notice two twenty-something breeders wheeling one baby in a carriage and hauling another in a papoose. My ears still ache 3 days later.
7:00: A couple of fighters get into the cage in their jeans and begin to warm up. Both are later KO’d.
7:30: I have to urinate, so bolt for the bathroom as the place begins to pack out. Men are two deep at the 16 urinals. Of the two sinks one is out of soap and the other soap dispenser is hanging from the wall at an odd angle. Most of the men opt not to use the sinks.
7:45: The fights begin, with one in the audience as well, twenty seats down and to the left. The three levels of security—including cops—converge on the four coed idiots and remove them. It seems to have been two couples scuffling.
The concrete aisles and stairs are getting slick. Over the course of the fight we see five slip and falls [two audible above the techno din] within ten seats of our position.
We count beer runs by the numerous fat middle-aged white men in our area and determine that the average spectator is consuming 48 ounces of beer per hour, at a cost of $23 per an hour, for 4.5 hours. Ajay [who is black and therefore permitted to make this judgment] notes that many of these aging white boys were in fact ‘whiggers’, dancing to the rap riffs and wiggling their butts as they brought home two and three beers at a time.
8:45: We are well into the preliminary fights when two whiggers behind us try to talk a man and his son out of their seats. They finally realize that they cannot count, and take their actual assigned seats, apologizing in good humor. The father and the lead whigger strike up a friendship. Behind them a very drunk redneck begins to scream and chant, and continues his inane fight commentary for hours, ever in favor of white opponents over ‘that guy’. Every time he opened his mouth when a black fighter was in the ring we cringed, expecting the dreaded n-word at any moment. A man with dreadlocks, that stink so bad that we do not open the popcorn, takes the seat next to me.
9:45: I have been holding it, but really have to pee. I strategically time my dash for the 16 urinal facility serving 1,000 drunk men, during a main event fight. As I turn towards the men’s room a man in cowboy boots, who slipped and fell heading into the men’s room, is being strapped to a board in a neck brace, and given oxygen. The EMTs seem worried and the cops are yawning as they lean against the wall. I carefully enter the facility to find the tile floor is a half-inch deep swamp of black piss. The urinals are five deep and the piss is threatening to overflow from half of them as there is no time to flush—not that anyone wants to touch the handles. Two men are texting on their cell phones so I cut in front of them and empty the aching bladder. I turn to the sink, which is only being used by one other clean freak [who I dearly hope trains food handers], who is operating the faucet with his elbows. The towel dispensers are empty and the soap dispensers are torn from the walls. I use the back of my hand to work the faucets and my pants to dry my hands, and decide to never drink a beer at the Baltimore Arena again. I make my exit as a man slips and catches himself on the wall, looking at the black urine a foot from his face with dread disgust…
10:45: The drunk two rows back is chanting and commenting with such banal regularity that the whigger behind us confers with the father as to how much they will have to pay the redneck to shut up. The boy behind me wants the fighter to break his opponent’s leg. A man five rows back want the losing fighter to die, and shouts, ‘Kill him!’
11:45: The main event fights are good, but not as good as the opening fights. These are celebrity fighters however, so the people in the front row of each section feel the need to stand, even though it does nothing to improve their view, causing the thousands behind them to stand or turn and watch the monitors. You definitely want to be next to the stairs so you can see the monitors.
The hipster sitting with his pretty wife on the other side of the dreadlock dude has now gotten up to use the bathroom or get more beer over a dozen times. I begin to fantasize about killing the DJ, and decide to write him into a novelette as a Randy Bracken victim. The goons in front of us are rollicking drunk and now calling over the rotgut beer venders. The man behind us sneezes on Ajay’s neck, wetting her down pretty good. She is visibly sickened.
The drunk two rows back is now so loud that the whigger next to the kid behind me is begging him to be quiet, claiming, “I came here so I wouldn’t have to hear Joe Rogan run his mouth, and now I have to listen to your shit! I didn’t drop over two beans on this seat to listen to your lame-ass commentary—please man!”
That heroic plea bought us a round of redneck free UFC. We now forgave him his cocked fitted yo hat and beltless cargo shorts.
12:30: Jon Jones has schooled his opponent so we bolt to the parking garage in hopes of getting out of it before 2:00. We manage to make it out into Harm City traffic by 1:30 and head to the diner out on Eastern Avenue, reasoning, that since fully half of the fight goers are out-of-towners, that we might have some UFC free dining.
1:45: The diner is crawling with high school girls in ridiculous dresses, some utilizing less fabric than a pair of fight shorts. There is a pretty blonde with a huge pear-shaped ass wearing a giant stretchy sock-like body-skirt. When she sashays by Ajay recoils as if one of the rumbling cheeks actually made contact. She then cringes at the three wenches and three gang bangers screaming and laughing in the booth behind us. Our waitress is in old urban chain-smoking wench with a blackened eye-brow who begins complaining to us about her roommate’s grandchildren being loud and keeping her awake. She then sees the flood of local UFC fans—a loud, drunk and obnoxious crowd—streaming in, and spends most of our stay hiding in the kitchen.
3:00: The wench still has not brought our check. I get the hostess to print it out, reluctantly leave a tip for the worst waitress in Baltimore, and we head out the road, like Lot and his daughter escaping from a city of doomed sin. Between the two of us we are numbed by the 8 hours of loud stupidity that cannot be redeemed by the brilliant combat in the cage. The show was a command performance, in which the promoter deftly catered to a rude, crude—predominantly white Marylanders, West Virginians, Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and whatever you call rednecks from Delaware—crowd via the lingua franca of contemporary hip-hop culture and that ages old social lubricant: beer. Half of the drivers leaving the event had to be smashed.
The fights are much easier to follow at home. I cannot understand attending such an event to see the fight. This UFC phenomenon falls more into the ‘madness of crowds’ psychology and the ‘cult of personality’ complex than a desire to view athletes pursuing their goals. It was an eye-opening, people-watching, mind-numbing event, which I will never repeat, but am glad to have experienced.
