Mixed martial arts’ Ultimate Fighting Championship has come to town and, though it’s Sunday daytime, the darkened interior of Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium evokes an enormous nightclub. Suspended from the rafters, spotlights trace the crowd like police searchlights, and amid these mazy beams and other flashing lights there’s a doof doof beat loud and incessant enough to defibrillate a stopped heart and ensure that everyone, not only the day’s fighters, will be going to sleep with a ringing in the ears.
It’s quite a sight, however, to see the playing arena filled with fans and, raised up in the middle of them, as far away from the cheap seats as a life-changing lottery win, the octagon, a black, head-high, cushion-edged, chain-link enclosure that is the UFC’s signature piece. Despite the brutality some believe it embodies it looks about as dastardly as a pool fence. And given what will turn out to be a record UFC crowd of 56,214 and a gate of $9 million, you can bet the Victoria Government is pleased it overturned, in March this year, its previous ban of the octagon – having been convinced by stakeholders, and perhaps some aspirational accounting, that the octagon, while not exactly subtle, was safer for competitors than a boxing-style ring.
The end of the ban opened the doors for yet another big event to bring its caravans into Melbourne, although this one has what feels like a significant point of difference. Not because it’s the first time the UFC has come to the shores of Port Phillip Bay but because the event – one that many associate, quite reasonably, with hyper masculinity – is headlined by four women: US bantamweight world champion Ronda Rousey, strawweight world champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk from Poland, and their respective challengers, American Holly Holm and Canadian Valerie Letourneau.
Of the four, however, it’s Rousey whose name is first on the marquee and on everyone’s lips. Four years ago UFC president Dana White said women would never fight in the octagon. Today the former Olympic judo bronze medallist is the UFC’s biggest and best-paid star and draw card having put together a 12-0 unbeaten record by mowing down her opponents with the ruthlessness of a cougar attacking a hen house. Throw in her photogenic looks, her brash confidence and some quotable straight-talking, Rousey, with the help of a media culture not known for circumspection, has transcended MMA to the point she’s been invited to sit on talk show couches and take turns in popcorn movies like Expendables 3 and Fast and Furious 7. Any moment now, surely, Mattel will attempt to cash in with Arm-Bar Barbie.
But at the risk of labouring the point, it’s not just women Rousey has won over, but men. This seems fairly obvious on an early lap of the inside concourse. More men than I could bother counting were wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “Rowdy Ronda Rousey”. These men form part of a crowd that appears to me to be distinctly different from an Australian football crowd and, perhaps needless to say, an antiques roadshow crowd. Its number is made up, overwhelmingly, of males between about 15-40, some of whom brought their kids (and to think my dad just took me the library on a Wednesday afternoon). To speculate wildly, I’d say that as the event took place you could swing a cat around the weights rooms, boxing rings and dojos of Melbourne safe in the knowledge you wouldn’t hit anyone who might enjoy hitting you back.
There are also a good number of women in attendance, about 20% of the crowd I’d estimate, and I ask two of them what’s brought them to the event. As it happens the two, sisters in their 30s, were brought up in a karate-loving family and one of them, Amy, teaches the martial art. But they say they’ve been drawn by the spectacle that is the UFC, although Jen admits that the promise of blood also has its appeal. “We want some good blood and gore,” she says, only half-jokingly I’d say. “A knock-out or an arm-bar would also be nice. We also love a good chick fight.”
They’ll have to wait a bit for that, however, what with 11 bouts to get through before the two women’s title fights commence.
I take my seat four fights in after Australian Daniel Kelly – a four-times Olympian judoka – wins his middleweight bout against American Steve Montgomery. While I missed the fight I do catch part of Kelly’s press conference in the media room afterwards and I’m struck for the first of many times on this day by the thoughtfulness and articulacy of the most of the competitors. It’s a reminder that, however you feel about blood sports, to write off these competitors as some kind of brawling brutes is lazy and wrong. These are highly-trained professional athletes who enter the ring not with a red mist over their eyes but a clarity of vision and purpose.
After two further preliminary bouts – one of which sees veteran Sydney fighter Anthony Perosh flattened by a straight right to the mouth – we’re ready for a welterweight bout between Peter Sobotta of Germany and Kyle Noke of Dubbo. As will occur before every fight, both competitors enter the ring separately, serenaded at blistering volume by a song of their choice. Sobotta has chosen the fairly predictable Bad Boys by Inner Circle, while Noke goes for the even more predictable Down Under. But his song choice plays to the home crowd and it gets veteran fight announcer Bruce Buffer, wearing a crooner’s tuxedo, lip-synching and pumping his right knee to the reggae beat as he awaits his turn to rip into his introductions with all the subtlety of the Las Vegas Strip. “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiit’s tiiime!” he screams into his microphone and the crowd laps up the theatrics. I’d like to hear Buffer at a McDonald’s drive-thru.
Buffer having done his bit, one of two “octagon girls” sitting nearby rises from her seat, drops her full-length gown, and steps up and onto the apron of the octagon. Then, holding up a card on which is written “round 1”, she circumnavigates the octagon wearing only a tiny red halter top, barely there red shorts, and a smile. A lonely wolf whistle cuts the air and I wonder about the juxtaposition between the “octagon girls” and the progressiveness of today’s proceedings being hung on the skills of four female fighters.
The fight begins and Sobotta and Noke circle each other cagily before striking, and the slap of foot on thigh is distinctive from the thud of fist into head. Then, midway through the opening round, Noke snaps forward and heels Sobotta in the midriff with a front kick. The American yelps and cracks like the top of a crème brûlée before Noke piles on top of him, hammering Sobotta’s head with his hands as Sobotta desperately tries to protect himself. This is known as ground and pound, and is perhaps the least palatable part of MMA, although referees are usually quick to end proceedings if enough blows get through a prone fighter’s defences. Sure enough, less than 10 seconds later, the referee has seen enough and stops the fight.
Next up, a 21-and-looks-it local lad, Jake Matthews, arrives in the ring to We Will Rock You, a song that on its own will keep the members of Queen in perms for the rest of their lives. His opponent is Mexican Akbarh Arreola who is as lean and fit as a greyhound. At first it appears Arreola has too much experience but, in the second round, after the two men are locked on the canvas in a human pretzel, Matthews extricates himself and grounds and pounds Arreola, opening up a deep cut above the Mexican’s right eye. It’s bad enough for the referee to call in the doctor and to then end the fight early on his advice. The Mexican drops his head to his areolas while Matthews performs a backflip on the canvas.
There are three more fights before the headline acts. In the first, American Jared Rosholt starts on the back foot what with his entrance song being Phil Collins’s In The Air Tonight. But bringing his wrestling skills to the fore he wears down his much taller opponent, Dutchman Stefan Struve, in the day’s most underwhelming bout. The following fight is much livelier and though Jamaican Uriah Hall shows he has all the moves and a roundhouse kick as dangerous as a scorpion’s strike, Australian Robert Whittaker proves a tough and canny opponent and he does enough to win on points over three rounds. UFC commentator Joe Rogan steps into the octagon to interview him after the bout, as he does all the victors, and Whittaker delights the crowd with his laconic explanation of tactics: “My default plan A was to throw a lot of punches.”
The penultimate fight before the main events is between Sydney-based Kiwi Mark Hunt, a man with a chin harder than logarithms, and a Brazilian known as Big Foot De Silva. Though he has short legs relative to his long torso, he still stands 6ft4in and with an Easter Island head and a back as square and wide as the rear of a lorry he’s a formidable sight. But if the fans are hoping for a bloody, drawn-out epic like the two put on in Brisbane in 2013 they are disappointed. In the first round Hunt catches a crabbing De Silva on the right ear and he falls like a giant redwood. Hunt manages another shot with De Silva crumpled on the ground before yet another fight is stopped early.
The crowd, it feels at this point, has been entertained but it won’t be walking away thinking it’s been a memorable occasion. That’s the nature of sport. You have to have run of the mills days like ths against which to measure the sublime. But then the women arrive into the octagon and any ho-humming is quickly forgotten.
In the first title bout strawweight champion Jedrzejczyk and Letourneau put on a bruising, five-round slugfest that leaves both women battered, though still standing. Though built like pixies compared to the behemoths they’ve followed the two give and take enormous punishment but it’s the corn-rowed Jedrzejczyk who controls the fight and lands the more telling blows, the most vivid among them a front leg kick that hits the game Letrourneau flush on the left cheek bone, spinning her head on its axis. Letourneau manages a takedown in the opening round but it’s the punishing output of Jedrzejczyk – 220 “significant strikes” according to stats – that wins her the bout by unanimous decision. As she has her title belt fitted Letourneau, her left eye all but swollen shut, turns away, grasping the fence with her head hanging low.
And so, finally, to the main event. The noise within the stadium increases, if that’s possible, and all eyes and camera phones turn to greet the arrival of Rousey and Holm. The challenger, a former world boxing title holder, arrives first to a driving Celtic beat before Rousey, dressed in black like the Grim Reaper, walks menacingly to the octagon. Such is Rousey’s aura I see one of the octagon girls morph into a fan, and she holds up her phone (where was she hiding that?) to delightedly capture Rousey’s arrival.
In the octagon now Rousey and Holm, both impressively fit and muscular, bounce and pace through Buffer’s all-cards-on-the-table introduction – “Rooooooooowdy Ronda Rousey!…. Holly ‘The Preacher’s Daughter’ Holm!” – before they are invited to touch gloves. Rousey with a look that could curdle milk declines, playing up to her “bad ass” reputation that has drawn so many punters here tonight.
The horn goes to start the fight and from the outset we get a hint that something remarkable could be on the cards. With her mouth agape and eyes bugging out of her head Rousey pursues Holm around the octagon. Holm, back-peddling, keeps her nerve and Rousey at bay by landing shots that soon begin to redden Rousey’s nose and mouth and elicit gasps from the crowd. A right left combination here, a left elbow to Rousey’s face there. There’s a moment in the first round when Rousey pins Holm to the fence and you wonder if it’s the prelude to a take down, thereby allowing Rousey the opportunity to manipulate Holm’s joints in a way joints are not meant to be manipulated. But Holm gets out of the clinch and the pattern of the fight is resumed.
The break between the first and second rounds does not prompt Rousey into a re-consideration of her tactics, despite it being the first round she has lost in her UFC career. So it is that Rousey continues her relentless advancing. As a result, a minute in, she is spun about and knocked off kilter by a straight left from Holm. As Rousey rises unsteadily and turns back to face Holm the challenger kicks her under her right ear and Rousey blacks out, falling sideways and hitting the canvas shoulder and head first. Smelling blood, and victory, Holm pounces and delivers two hammer fist blows before she’s pushed off the battered and prone Rousey by the referee. Holm wins, holding her hands to her head, as incredulous as everyone else.
As the crowd goes mad, officials swarm into the ring and medical staff rush to the aid of a bloody Rousey. After she rises to her feet the official announcement is made and Rogan then interviews an eloquent respectful Holm as Rousey is steered out of the octagon and out of the spotlight. She begins the long lonely walk of the vanquished fighter.
Melbourne’s first foray into the UFC has its headline.
