Episode 507 - Fights to the Death
In this episode, Jeremy tries to answer a question from a listener about the existence of Fights to the Death
Fights to the Death - Episode 507
From video games to team sports to Hollywood movies, how obsessed people are with violence? In this episode, Jeremy tries to answer a question about Fights to the Death which includes some of America's most beloved sports from MMA to Boxing fights to American Football as well as one of the best selling video games. Listen and join the conversation!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download it here.Jeremy Lesniak:Welcome, you’re tuned in to whistlekick martial arts radio, episode 507. Today, I’m answering a question about fights to the death. My name is Jeremy Lesniak, show host, whistlekick founder, and if you’re unfamiliar with whistlekick well, everything we do here is in support of the traditional martial arts. If you’re interested in what that means, what we’re doing, go to whistlekick.com. That’s where you’ll find everything were involved in and one of the things we’re involved in is selling some stuff. We have a store and if you check out the store, make sure you use the code PODCAST15 to save 15%. That could be on some gear or a shirt or maybe one of our programs like our new speed program lots of stuff over there go check it out. 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The show, all the things were doing they’re expensive and we appreciate your help in keeping the lights on.Today’s subject comes from a question. A question that was first posed on 1st cup. If you’re unfamiliar with 1st cup, it’s the morning show that I do live on YouTube five days a week and if you’re interested in checking out 6:30 AM Eastern and it’s fun. It’s me in a bathrobe with a cup of coffee, responding to things that people write in. Is not quite an ask me anything but it’s pretty darn close. And so, this question I tackled it and it sat with me. And I thought you know, I need to go deeper on this and we’re better to go deeper on the subject the martial arts radio. And the question that was posed was from Gabe; do you think this world will ever see gladiator type games which include death? Now course if you want to check out the episode of 1st cup where we talk about this it’s the May 21 episode, I don’t usually talk about when I record things but yet that’s when I recorded this is May 21, 2020. Check that out if you want to that was an off-the-cuff response and while I haven’t gone back and taken notes on it, I think I’m following a pretty similar flow here. And now did do a bunch of research, I looked up statistics and there were a number of kinda avenues that I chased down because the short answer is yes. I think we will. Now I’m not hundred percent sure that were going to see in our lifetimes, of course how old you are dramatically impacts your likelihood but I think the chance of seeing this only increases over time. We’ve been fascinated with this idea of violent combat that goes all the way to death for a long time. The most popular movie that first featured this at least that I’m familiar with is the Running Man. And if you’ve seen that movie, you know, it’s about convicts fighting to the death. There’s always going to be a portion of our population that enjoys watching violence. A popular UFC pay-per-view gets more than a million buys meaning more than 1 million people are paying for it. How many people are also watching with that person who buys it? Think about a bar where there might be dozens of people. So out of that million, I think we can say 10-50-100 million people are watching a popular UFC pay-per-view, last year American football had 16.5 million people watching. Now of course, neither of those are to the death but I think what they illustrate is that there is a large portion of our population that appreciates the more physical contact that occurs in mixed martial arts and in football. If you talk to people about what they like about football, there are a lot of things that they’ll answer with but one of them will be the dramatic hits. Anyone who’s played football talks about putting an intense hit on somebody else well, course depending on their position on the field, but I don’t think we can deny that this is something that is part of our culture for some of us at least.The best-selling video game of all time it’s Grand Theft Auto V. If you ever played that, if you know that series of video games, it’s violent. In case you’re interested the first best-selling video game of all time is Minecraft and to my mind that’s likely because of the age range, the appeal. Grand Theft Auto five isn’t something that parents are going to let their children play at least not knowingly. Now in order for my prediction to come true, we have to consider how violence is changed over time and it has in fact it’s increased pretty dramatically. Violence in PG-13 movies has tripled since 1950 and we’re seeing the notion of that violence played out at all levels not just PG-13 movies. Consider the violence and rated R movies even G and PG movies, there’s more violence in there ever was. The hunger games spent three movies exploring the idea of fighting to the death and yeah, they brought in some honor and there’s some benefit to their area, their district, if we say it in the parlance of these movies. And of course, there are plenty of other films that explore this idea running man and hunger games are the most notable but there are many, many others and some of them were fairly recent. How does this all add up? Well as a population we will pay to watch violence that is undeniable. As the NFL creates, updates rules to make for a safer environment for their players, there are people that complain about the level of contact and penalties and all that. The UFC has gone through the same thing. If you take a look at early days of the UFC, there were far fewer rules and as they Institute rules, people complain. Now that doesn’t mean that rules are bad I’m certainly not saying that all, I’m saying that there will always be a portion of people who resist the removal of violence from these things that they enjoy watching because they enjoy them for the violence. And if you know where to look, you can still find. Even today, rule centric fight promotions that have even fewer rules that are much more violent than the UFC. And I’m not talking about others that maybe you’ve heard of kind of spoken in the same sentences and yes some of these fight promotions or even legitimate. The bareknuckle fighting championship is based in Philadelphia, right here in the US, it is still active and from everything I can tell it continues to grow it is exactly what it sounds like. I’m not saying it is good or bad right or wrong I’m simply observing it’s often said that the world moves in cycles, of course gladiators of the past many of them thought to the death, no, not always but from everything we know today it was a huge draw. And if we look at the momentum of violence in modern society, just as we become more civilized there is a counter effort we’ll say to showcase an ever-increasing standard of violence. As we become more civilized there’s a portion of the population that demands more violence. Is it to remain in balance, I don’t know, but it seems that way it’s odd to me but the data backs it up. If I do a quick search on YouTube for skateboarding, the third suggested auto complete is fails. If you know what skateboarding fails look like? Its people getting hurt, they’re violent. If I do the same thing for MMA, if I type MMA into YouTube the third result is knockouts. Arguably the most violent part of full-contact fighting. We know people want this stuff and if they’re willing to pay for it it’s going to happen.This is where we turn hypothetical. It doesn’t take so many whose terribly creative to imagine that it would be incredibly lucrative to broadcast a let’s say a real “real” fight over the Internet. Now if amateur fighters, amateur mixed martial artists are willing to risk their lives granted not a terribly great chance of death or even serious injury but still a chance, if they’re willing to do that for no money, for the glory, maybe the the hope of long-term money, how many average people would step into a ring with no rules for a $1 million purse? Imagine that there’s $1 million on the line and $750,000 goes to the winner, $250,000 goes to the loser. And what if in the rules it says know what if you pass away, that money goes to your family. There are plenty of places in the world were $250,000 is more money than people will see in their lifetime. Would everyone do this? No. But doesn’t take everyone, it takes two people. While I imagine the rules of this sort of fight event when specifically state that is to the death, we want to stretch too far to imagine that that fight occurs without a referee that the end of the fight is when one person can’t continue. While let’s say that the winter is loaded up on adrenaline, their judgments clouded, and maybe there low but sadistic and they go too far and the person who loses the fight loses their life. I think we can imagine that happening. What happens then to the attention to this fight it probably was broadcast live over the Internet, probably some low-budget pay-per-view and then all of a sudden people start talking about it. What happens when they hold the next one? It goes viral people pay more more attention to it. Now, in my imagination the only reason this has not happened is it the people who have the means don’t have the willingness. The people with the money, the connections, haven’t been inclined to do this. But if we look far enough into the future at some point, eventually this is going to change, someone will do this. And when that happens I’ll refuse to watch.A little bit different sort of episode today but I hope you enjoyed it I hope it made you think because that’s one of my favorite things about what we do over here. If you want to see the show notes for this or any other episode go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com you will find every single episode we’ve ever done, every episode has a page, all to itself with links, photos, transcript, sometimes even more. If you’re willing to support us in the work that we do, you’ve got some options: visit the store@whistlekick.com and use the code PODCAST15 and get 15% off you can also share an episode, leave a review, tell a friend or contribute to our Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick. And I hope that if you see somebody out in the world wearing something with whistlekick on it, you’ll introduce yourself. I’d love to hear your guest suggestions, your topic suggestions, so you can email me Jeremy@whistlekick.com and our social media is at whistlekick. Until next time train hard, smile, and have a great day!