Welcome To The Show!

First time blogger here. My first thought when writing this was, I need a catchy opening line, something to really grab the public's attention. I was hoping for something in the vein of Michael Buffer's,"Let's Get Ready To Rumble", Bruce Buffer's, "It's TIme!" or Chris Jericho's "Welcome to Raw... Is... Jericho!" So, I settled on my title for this post, a homage/blatant rip off of Saliva's "Ladies And Gentlemen".

As you might have gathered by the name drops above, this blog is a labour of love to two of my favourite things, pro wrestling and mixed martial arts, or more commonly, WWE and UFC, the premier organisations for those two sports/entertainment entities. Now, to some, this might be sacrilegious. I mean, WWE is "fake" and UFC is "real", how could I possibly combine the two? Well, WWE, back when it was known as the WWF (before those panda-loving bastards swooped in) decided to basically throw up their hands and go, "Yep, we admit it, it's fake, these guys aren't really fighting" and in the process coined the term "sports-entertainment". Fitting enough. Pro wrestlers are (mostly) world-class athletes performing highly athletic moves for the entertainment of a paying audience. Some people- whinging pricks- take issue with it being referred to as a sport in any sense, because the wrestlers aren't really competing. To that, I say, they are absolutely competing. The wrestler with the best look, performance and connection with the crowd, the one that causes the audience to spend the most money, will earn far more money and fame than the guy in the middle of the card. Tl;dr- the best wrestler will be rewarded the most. Unless you're Roman Reigns... I kid! Maybe? Anyway...

Back to what links WWE and UFC- I'm going to have trouble with going on tangents, aren't I? WWE is an entertainment company that carries sporting elements. UFC is a sports organisation that carries entertainment elements. You watch sports primarily to be entertained, I'm sure, but what I mean by carrying entertainment elements is that the fighters are becoming more aware of the power of entertainment and showmanship. You might have heard of a guy called Conor McGregor? That's because, in addition to being a great fighter, he has down the art of the promo, or, the ability to trash-talk. This is nothing new in combat sports- Muhammed Ali and Mike Tyson did it to great success (and also appeared in WWE, but I digress). That's the reason why Conor McGregor has millions in the bank, has appeared on Conan O'Brian, been spoofed on Saturday Night Live- because he understands the power of entertainment and promotion. That's why Conor is so successful and Demetrious Johnson- the UFC flyweight champion and possibly the most purely talented mixed martial artist fighting today- is barely known to the general public and spends a lot of time bitching about his pay. Conor's larger than life persona would not be out of place at a WWE event and he's clearly been inspired by it- his famous walk with his arms swinging in an over the top manner was directly stolen from WWE chairman Vince McMahon! If you don't believe me, go to Youtube and type in "Conor McGregor No Chance In Hell". There's a lovely video of Conor first doing the walk, I believe in a hotel lobby, singing Vince's theme song.

So, there's the WWE-UFC link. I could go on, but I'll leave that for another time. Here's the deal- in this blog I'll be writing reactions to all WWE events and all UFC events. I wouldn't call them reviews or reports as I'm only going to write about the parts I find interesting, whether positive or negative. Also, I'll be writing articles about major pro wrestling/MMA news stories on this platform. I post on forums regularly about this stuff, and I'll continue to do so, but in my blogs I'll go into a lot more detail in my writing. If you don't like reading a lot of text about pro wrestling and MMA... well, you probably haven't made it this far, have you?

One final thing- you might be wondering about the title of my blog, The Arena. I wanted something that referred to both wrestling and MMA, and I realised that both of those things occur inside an arena! Genius, right?

Until next time, take care,

Mick