fight

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face" - Mike Tyson

It's 6:15 on Sunday morning. Two hours have passed since my confused alarm chimed on its day off. My tired eyes fixate on the screen illuminating the room, and the peace of dawn is broken by high-pitched growling of Joe Rogan and co. The television pixels construct an image from over 5,200 miles away, in Las Vegas, where one of the most important sporting events of the year has descended into unadulterated chaos.

Conor McGregor is not a personality associated with calm. The Irishman is the shot of whisky that so often fuels a late Saturday night - a figuration that has become a commercial reality through his Proper 12 venture - and one of few people on this planet that can get me to set a 5:15am alarm on a Sunday morning. His opponent, Khabib Nurmagomedov, personifies everything expected with a bruiser from the Dagestan region of Russia: unaesthetic, rough, robust.

Three minutes and three seconds into the fourth round of the biggest UFC fight of all time, the tactical skill of Nurmagomedov choked the ego of McGregor. After months of media attention, hype and cash, the Russian bear suffocated the octagon's green and gold oxygen supply to the point of blurry-eyed submission. For ten seconds, Khabib was the golden boy and his legacy was stamped in the blood-stained canvas of the UFC.

Then the Dagestan fighter initiated a riot. As he flew over the cage and towards McGregor's team, the glitz of Las Vegas descended into a brawl outside your local Wetherspoons. The technical quality that illuminated a championship fight became a distant memory as wild, un-calculated punches were thrown from all parties. It was raw violence,  but I couldn't stop watching.

It seems twisted to enjoy watching two people fight. In both boxing and UFC, a splash of blood or loss of consciousness is met with frenzied excitement, and the perpetrator's arm is raised whilst medics frantically attend to their victim. Anthony Joshua is lauded as a national hero and role model to kids, but his job is to knock people out. His dedication and skill is commendable, but to celebrate his end goal is to disregard the empathetic characteristic of humans, one of few that sets us apart from the rest.

Fighting can be described as olympian, heroic, and herculean, but what is its entertainment value? Those who know combat sports inside out enjoy the skill, tactics and narratives. Others see it as a cathartic release from the stresses and frustrations of our society; watch them do the punching so you don't have to. For more casual fight fans, such as myself, the shock of violence represents a rare shot of adrenaline - or liquor, when McGregor is involved.

So, do we accept it? Many will blacklist UFC after last night's scenes, if they hadn't already, and it will represent a return to Earth for boss Dana White on a night that was meant to be one giant leap for fight-kind. Yet, whilst it may deter the sport's fringe fans, it represented the raw drama that bonds the sport with its passionate followers and they won't go anywhere.

The UFC took an inch deep cut to the brow last night, and the mainstream media will undoubtedly try to pound Khabib, McGregor and co. into submission. Questions remain over the beast that White has created - no amount of Vegas security could stop it baring its rotten teeth last night - but it is important not to sweep over 1,000 professional MMA fighters under one blood-stained carpet. As undercard winner Tony Ferguson said, McGregor and Khabib were merely "knuckleheads making the sport look bad".

Variety colours sport. One weekend can see emotion induced by knock-outs, holed putts, over-takes and goals. Mavericks such as McGregor and Tyson Fury can receive just as much support as the straight-shooters of Joshua and Roger Federer. Not everyone can appreciate jabs, left-hooks and ground and pounds, but in the right context they represent crashing percussion in the orchestra of sport. Whilst we're the conductor, the drums will keep on playing.