Awesome

Cage fighting is making a comeback, reports the NYT.

Alive and Thriving in the Midwest: Brawling in Cages

SIOUX FALLS, S.D., July 23 - When they rewind the video of the fight in the cage, all the blood will spray back into Gervis Fool Bull's nose, all the screams will be sucked into the collective chest of the sweating crowd, and the fist will snap back toward the big truck driver from Iowa who threw it, a man with a mohawk haircut who grew up fighting his twin brother in the neighborhood junkyard.

But to find where this punch between strangers really began, the rewinding would have to go back almost three weeks, to the Fourth of July in the lakeside tourist town of Okoboji, Iowa, where the twin brothers were prowling around, drinking, not liking tourists.

"My goal that night was to beat up the biggest tourist I could find," said Nate Hawn, 20.

He picked a marine, he said, and beat him in the crowded streets. A stranger approached, and the Hawns wondered if he wanted some, too.

The man said that he worked with a promoter of cage fighting and that the guys should come to Sioux Falls in a few weeks. "He said, 'You guys are exactly what we're looking for,' " the brother with the mohawk, Ryan Hawn, recalled.

[...]

"It's like the hardest core," said Jarod Stevens, 25, a beefy, freckled redhead who works at a Hummer dealership, signing up for his first fight on Saturday in Sioux Falls. "It's proving something to yourself, that you're man enough to be a part of it and do well, hopefully."

By the night's end, Mr. Stevens will be holding a bag of ice to a bluish lump on his forehead.

[...]

"I always say, 'Where's the rule book?' " said Vernon Brown, 37, a former television reporter who joined the Sioux Falls City Council last year and is a critic of cage fighting. "They keep giving me a sheet printed off the Internet that says no eye-gouging, no fishhooks, no fingers in bodily orifices."

He does not foresee banning the sport.

Mr. Christian, 40, who introduces himself as Dog, being examined by nurse Abby Small at a weigh-in before what would have been his first fight. But he is alarmed by a question on the forms — "This being wanted by any law enforcement agencies, what does that mean?" he asks — and ultimately withdraws.

In Sioux Falls and other small cities and towns of the Great Plains, cage fighting is making a comeback, drawing hundreds, even thousands of spectators to fairgrounds, small arenas and, most disturbingly to city officials, the parking lots of bars.

Of course, it's the midwest -- the heartland, the Bible Belt, the red states -- where such naked brutality shines. I guess you have to have something to do while not cheerleading the war in Iraq.

What cage match would you like to see? Ann Coulter vs. a rabid raccoon? Robert Byrd vs Chief Justice Rehnquist? Zell Miller vs Chris Matthews? A kangaroo vs a bear? Jared from Subway vs Ross from Friends? Marvelle vs Bob Dobbs? Pete Laney vs Tom Craddick? Tom DeLay vs a horde of insects? Jesus vs Allah? GWB vs Hillary? Tom Cruise vs a chimp?