A Russian fight promotion apparently decided that regular MMA isn’t exciting enough.
Mixed martial arts is often cited as being one of the most exciting sports in the world – but what do you do if the thrill of seeing two men throwing heavy leather at each just doesn’t do it for you anymore? Well, you give them blindfolds of course.
This might sound like something which shouldn’t have got past the ‘planning’ stage but as long as MMA has existed, so has the concept of ‘freak show’ fights.
In the early days of the sport, these types of fights (which predominantly took place in Japan) were your standard run of the mill fare, usually pitting a giant man against someone several sizes below him (or her, in the case of Gabi Garcia).
And to be truthful, that’s usually where the intrigue ended as when it actually became time for it to be a sporting contest, the skills on show were more often than not less than impressive.
But freak shows fights have recently given birth to a whole new subgenre of the sport: the so-called ‘Pop MMA’ which continues to gain steam in Russia, and features the types of fights which would have some athletic commissions handing out lifetime suspensions to all involved.
Always something new from those events #popMMA pic.twitter.com/QxcR2NRZGN
— Matysek (@Matysek88) June 24, 2022
One such fight is currently doing the rounds on social media.
It shows two fighters, both wearing blindfolds (and both apparently peeking underneath the bottom of them, but forget about that for now) throwing bombs at each other with varying degrees of success.
Their tag team partners, who are also in the cage with them, eventually don their own blindfolds and take over.
The fight, as you might predict, eventually descends into chaos and the two referees on hand can barely contain the frustrations on show.
After reviewing the video on several occasions, it appears unsure as to who the actual winner of the bout was – but it could be said with a degree of certainty that the integrity of the sport probably won’t increase because of the clip.
You can view the entire event at this link, but be warned, the blindfolded MMA contest is just one small part of some of the surreal antics on show.
