MMA is kind of depressing for me. I imagined if I was there at the time, I would not have liked southern bloody rasslin' too. Fake fight is cool because it is fake. People beating the shit out of each other for real is not my thing. I can even get behind stiff wrestling because while it is painful, those two people are not disputing who will break the other person's body until it stops functioning right.
I think there is pleasure and motive in watching people fight; in watching struggle and pain and so on; wrestling my have started by tricking people into thinking it's real, but when it got out that it's not, only part of the appeal vanished (and for those that had the real competition as a main part of the appeal, MMA rose to fill that void); while trying to be fake, I think pro wrestling created a controlled enviroment where you can experience the fight without the actual fight . It's like a rollercoaster, it is fear of dieing without the (significant) risk of death, so it's a thrill or porn themed after taboos you would never break in real life for good reason.
To me, when I believe those two people are really trying to hurt each other, to punch each other on the head until something there turns off and the other person just can't get up, it kind of crosses a line. Like chair shots to the head crosses that line, too. It's no really an ethical thing, it's more of a feeling.
Wrestling as a form of athletic theater is perfect for me. Which is what makes it funny that time they made fun of Sandow for interpretative dancing, because that's what they do. Actually, if someone would try to find a less showbizz nomenclature to counter "sports entertainment"; I would go for "interpretative fighting".
