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Sports

UFC Event Brings Once-Illegal Sport to Pittsburgh

Thousands of local fans of mixed martial arts will see their first live matches Sunday night at Consol Energy Center.

When the Ultimate Fighting Championship makes its Pittsburgh debut Sunday night at the Consol Energy Center, thousands of Western Pennsylvania fans will be seeing the once illegal-in-Pennsylvania sport in person for the first time.

For Drew Long, it will be a familiar but no less exciting sight. Long, 34, of McDonald, has been a UFC fan for years but previously had to travel as far away as Columbus, OH, and Las Vegas to see an event in person. He gladly made those trips.

“The atmosphere at a UFC show is amazing,” he said. “Everybody is so pumped up and excited. At the first show in Ohio, not only did they sell out the arena for fight night; they had it one-third full on the day before just to watch the weigh-ins.”

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The Pittsburgh event, which will be televised live on Versus with the preliminary fights streamed live on Facebook, doesn’t boast the kinds of big-name stars typically featured in the UFC’s biggest pay-per-view events.  

The most interesting fight was to have involved welterweight Rick Story hoping to climb up the Top 10 rankings by beating veteran Nate Marquardt. The fight was scratched Saturday night, however, because Marquardt did not get medical clearance, according to ESPN.com.

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Another fight involves former NFL lineman Matt Mitrione, who is undefeated in his four UFC fights.  

To local fans, however, the star power of the card doesn’t matter as much as the fact that the UFC has finally come to Pittsburgh.  

“I’m just excited to see it live,” said Jason Ramsey, 28, of South Fayette. “I’ve been a fan for about three years, and I’m just curious to see what it’s like live and what the crowd will be like.”

Perhaps the best way to describe the UFC is this: Imagine a boxing match combined with college wrestling combined with Olympic judo. Fighters can punch, kick, knee and grapple with their opponents. The goal is to knock out the other guy, as in boxing, or to secure him in an inescapable choke-hold or arm-lock, as in judo.

If a clear victor doesn't emerge after 15 minutes -- or 25 minutes for championship fights -- three judges that the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission assigns will decide who won.

The sport is called mixed martial arts, or MMA. The UFC is the league -- kind of like the NFL of MMA.

When MMA and the UFC  began nearly 20 years ago, founders advertised the sport as a no-rules testing ground for martial arts styles. Who would win in a real fight -- a karate fighter or a kung-fu practitioner? What if a ninja fought a kickboxer?  

That meant lots of people with minimal professional fighting experience clobbering each other in a caged octagon, with some freakshow-like results -- a French kickboxer sending a sumo wrestler’s tooth into the third row, a boxer beaten while wearing just one glove, a karate fighter/refrigerator repairman repeatedly punching the groin of a guy who went on to have a small role as a henchman in an "Austin Powers" movie.

Many states quickly banned MMA. For three years, every domestic UFC event was held in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississipi, or Georgia -- the only states that would allow it.  

Over time, the sideshow element was squeezed out and world-class athletes began to take an interest. Olympic medalist wrestlers, champion kickboxers and other top martial artists began to compete.

As the UFC attracted better athletes and added rules, it gained acceptance in more states. When the Nevada State Athletic Commission -- the most important governing body for fighting sports -- agreed to regulate MMA in 2001, the floodgates opened.

The UFC landed a reality show on Spike TV, ESPN began covering the MMA, and pay-per-view buy rates soared. Today the sport draws more pay-per-view buys than boxing or professional wrestling.

Pennsylvania, however, was a longtime holdout.

Sunday’s event marks the first time the UFC has visited the state since August 2009, the same year MMA was legalized in the commonwealth.  

The good news for Pittsburghers attending their first event is that as the UFC’s popularity has grown so has the quality of its fan base. In the past, fight crowds were divided into two camps: avid fans of the sport and those who knew nothing but bought a ticket hoping to see carnage.  

“There used to be a lot of people yelling stupid, drunken things, but now not only is it more mainstream with families and celebrities attending, but they all know what they’re watching,” Long said.

When something subtle but important happens when the fighters are grappling on the ground, the audience sits up and takes notice. That's a change from the past, when crowds would boo or chant, “Stand them up.”

“It’s athleticism at its highest level,” Long says. “You have to have the strength of a wrestler with the cardio endurance of a boxer. You have to be flexible, and you have to have skill, and you can’t lack in any of those areas.”

If you're going: Tickets are still available for the event at the Consol Energy Center, 1001 Fifth Ave, Uptown. Gates are scheduled to open at 4 p.m. The televised event on Versus will begin at 9 p.m. The Consol Center permits small personal cameras with a 3-inch or smaller lens but no detatchable lenses or flashes and no video, audio or recording devices.

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