If there’s a lesson in the $4 billion sale of the UFC, it’s that once the blood starts gushing, so does the money.
The sale price, announced Monday, is the highest ever for a sports entity. If the NFL, another organization built on violence, somehow went on the block collectively, there wouldn’t be enough cash in the world to cover the cost of the deal.
Super agent Ari Emanuel, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s brother, is co-CEO of WME-IMG, which is part of the group buying the business. How long before we start debating where to put the UFC Hall of Fame in Chicago?
There will be a lot said and written about what the UFC’s sale says about us as humans, but it’s the same as it ever was: We might not want to be clubbed over the head with a closed fist, and perhaps we have to call upon all our powers of restraint not to punch the guy cleaning his teeth next to us on the train, but we sure like to watch two other people commit violence on one another in a small, caged area. If heavyweight Brock Lesnar isn’t who we see in our deepest, darkest, scariest dreams, then I don’t know who is.
If you think left-leaning Hollywood is too effete to hook up with the bloodthirsty UFC, then you either didn’t pay attention to the “Saw’’ franchise or haven’t noticed the moviemaking industry’s habit of going all in on anything that might earn a buck.
Four billion dollars. Crazy money for what, in essence, is a bar fight. Is the UFC a vicarious outlet that allows viewers to get what they want without giving in to their own darkest impulses? Or does violence, no matter how controlled, beget violence? I don’t know the answer. I do know that, while channel surfing, I’ll sometimes stop on a mixed-martial-arts fight. And enjoy it. I’m not sure what that makes me. Normal? Or complicit?
