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FIGHT GIRLS: So, uh, where’s the fight? |
Western Wishes — what an animal. When he was a chunky three-year-old, strutting around on the ranch back in Ardmore, Oklahoma, this bull got a horn infection so deep, it necessitated the amputation of his right horn. And now his one maneuver, when he gets a professional bull rider on his back, is to spin wickedly to the left. “He goes out there and really gets it on,” explained veteran rider Gilbert Carrillo last Saturday on the Versus show TOTAL BULL, “like real electric. And he don’t throw no belly rolls, either, he don’t throw no tricks, he just goes out there and spins.” Leftward he twists and prances, this heavyweight unicorn, this lopsided vortex of bullhood; lariats of phlegm lash back from his muzzle, and the proud cowboys are flung away like dolls. In the course of a study of the D+H Cattle Company (whose other notable performers include Mossy Oak Mudslinger, and Crossfire Hurricane), Total Bull delved into the lineage and background of Western Wishes. Fascinating stuff, but I couldn’t help feeling that a real biography of the bull would have taken a more psychological approach to his lack of a right horn. Was it his dæmon, the guardian of his genius, that rotted out the horn root — thereby making him turn forever to the left, to the left in a wild act of compensation? Did that missing prong in some sense make Western Wishes? I think it’s very likely.
Other beasts clashed on the Saturday-night finale of ULTIMATE FIGHTER 5, over on Spike. Having thrashed and pummeled their way through weeks of group-house living, Manny Gamburyan and Nate Diaz gave each other a perfunctory mauling at the Palms in Las Vegas. As a fight it was a bust: Gamburyan’s shoulder popped out of its socket moments into round two, and that was that. But the main event was still to come: the much-hyped rematch between the two coaches on Ultimate Fighter 5, BJ “The Prodigy” Penn and Jens “Little Evil” Pulver. In their last bout, five years ago, Pulver scored a surprise win. Penn — according to the UFC scriptwriters — had been pacing the cell of his anger ever since, raw with indignation: the pre-fight prattle was all needle, vengeance, grudge, and bad blood. So having choked out Pulver in the second round and then embraced him with every sign of fraternal love, Penn was approached by a confused Joe Rogan: “It’s great to see you guys finally squash this! How do you feel?!” Penn, coolly victorious, gazed into the electric Vegas darkness and narrowed his eyes. “If you want to know what BJ Penn feels like . . . ,” he said, “go to BJPenn.com right now!” And then he was gone, this futuristic non-statement hanging in the air behind him. Rogan floundered briefly before being rescued by meaty-voiced fellow commentator Mike Goldberg: “You know what? We do know what he feels like! He feels like the heaviest weight that could ever be placed upon him has been lifted!” Sure, Mike, sure.
Girls kick ass too, particularly the amazing Gina Carano: kickboxer, Muay Thai fighter and mentor to the gang on Oxygen’s FIGHT GIRLS (Tuesday at 10.30 pm). Were John Betjeman still with us — the most helpless fetishist of female athleticism in all of English verse — I would advise him against watching Carano in action: one glimpse of her ring style would have washed the poet away in a transport of senile lust. Fight Girls is interesting. It follows the Contender/Ultimate Fighter template — a group house, a knockout competition, formal contests contrasted with viperous domestic bickering — but the fights themselves are shoddily presented. No real-time action: just edits and reaction shots, and a strange pink light falling over the ring. Master Toddy, the Muay Thai instructor, is a character: having summoned the girls to some basin of desert rock outside Vegas, he addressed them from a nearby cliff in a booming Star Trek voice. “Climb toward me! Make your own way!” Intensely visionary, right?
But not as visionary as local comic Chris Coxen, of West Roxbury, who appeared on NBC’s LAST COMIC STANDING (Wednesday at 9pm) as “combat dancer” Danny Morsel. The stand-ups were on parade: desperate, engorged, each of them taking the stage like an emissary from some realm of heightened self-consciousness. Jokes, zingers, a dull relentless jabbing at the pleasure centers. But our man Danny Morsel got out the beatbox and popped some vicious martial-arts moves, with a Rambo headband and a “war doll” strapped to his chest . . . Too much for those goddamn middlebrow consensus-comedy judges, who instructed him to dance his way home. Shame!
Now then — some important news. Next week will be the last “This Week in Reality.” This daring experiment, to which I the writer and you the reader have given so much, is almost at an end. No tears. Be proud: in a tiny way — not detectible by conventional instruments, or indeed by any instruments at all — we have changed the face of the culture. So next time will be a sort of rolling review of our time together: the Top Ten Reality TV Moments of the Past Nine Months or So. All your pals will be there: Tred Barta, Erik Estrada, perhaps even a cast member or two from Meerkat Manor. Bring popcorn and a brave smile. ¡Venceremos!
