Category: PUNCHING DAY

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Sissyneck’s Getting Even! šŸŒ­

Well this is what I ordered:

(Thats suppose to be a whistle there on the right)

And this is what i got:

Its a sign of my exhaustion with this decayin world that even though my copy didnt come with the promised and pictured whistle, i couldnt even bring myself to write a mad email sayin whereā€™s my whistle give me a free book please. I just tiredly did the product review:

I mean i still gotta say *something*…i aint gonna one-star it, Im not tryin to wreck a resellers livelihood (lord knows i been on that side of things) but also I feel i have a Duty To Warn them as might also be tryin to procure the original item for archival or collectors purposes.

A brief a side: after I did that review this happened next, which i didnā€™t know we were doin now:

Oh i tried to resist. I know about 100 good reasons not to do this, and I know you do to, so you may scoff at me as weak and throw your stones, but I wonder, if in a moment of private ungardednessā€¦mightent you also succome?

Okay now im good and mad. Which, i think maybe to approach this book properly, its probably correct to be in a bit of a mean spirit, or, as i over-heard a father say to his young son in a shop once: ā€œTienes los crankies.ā€ Because even though it is listed as a humor book, there was no laughter left my lips as i read it, more just a feelin of bein contaminated and currupted by hate and a bittersomeness.

You can join in and get angry with me if you want; here maybe make a grumpy face and say like: ā€œWhat the hell is this, why are we even looking at this book? Richard Smith sounds like a dipshit, whos that, that name sounds super forgettable but also maybe familiar?ā€

We got here today because he wrote this one:

Which i will take this opportunity to refresh our hotdog PSA about the dangers of toxomplasmosis: if even for a second your brain was more interested in the kitty kama sutra than the Getting Even book, please go get parasite-tested.

So yes ok Richard Smith is a honorable writer about cat sex but does that make him a qualified instructor for teaching us what we want to know about vengance and such? Letā€™s get upset again: Who the hell does this guy DICK (smirk) Smith think he is to tell us about getting even? Well take a look at what else he wrote and published and sold:

Okay now its my turn to be mad at all of you: Raise a hands: how many of YOU skepticals reading this today have a best selling tetratrilogy? AND a NYT author profile!? Hm I dont see any hands out there (except Parginā€™s maybe). Well well well how interesting thats what i THOUGHT, maybe sit down and be humble and get ready to learn from Richard about living well. Ooh, this feels kinda nice to be all mad in a righteous fashion, Iā€™m feelin kinda energized over here.

That author profile is honestly pretty incomprehensible to my gentile eyes but there are two important parts, one is Richards oragine story:

A poster! Isnā€™t that just the silliest and most unprobable route to becomin a humor-writin fella you ever heard!? Letā€™s take just a second to share a giggle on that one.

Hereā€™s the poster in case you were wondering:

Dont worry about the part you canā€™t read it says things like getting a erection burns up 1 calorie and fellatio is 22 and cunnalingalus is also 22. Just one of those things that reminds us that 1972 is a foreign country and leaves us in wondrous confusion about who would possibly and/or ever hang this on a wall.

The other important part of the profile is just a excellent addition to our vocabulary words list:

Tummler. It feels nice in the mouth, but Iā€™m still a little unclear on what it actually significants, perhaps I should try to find a recent example on the web:

Haha ok yes now I know what that is this helps me understand why theres always those young ladies who are so nice to me at bat mitzvahs and why they love doin the electric slide so much.

Ok i feel like I took a wrong emotional turn here Iā€™m feeling delighted and charmed by the wonderful absurdity of the world, that aint no mind set for GETTING EVEN, lets back up a bit and ask Richard Smith to get us back on the right road of anger and resentious here. Get us started Rich.

Alright thats more like it, its time to get impatient and pissy if there is anything that delays my inmediate gradification. And you can probably already tell that Richard wrote a whole book about stuff that never happened, but thats fine, around here we know that thats maybe even better for our purposes of trying to understand the minds of them what create the cursed artifacts upon which this Patreon is built.

I think this is a excellent startin principle. Us versus Them is almost kinda baked into our brains as a way of getting het up. Half and half is also good proportions, that way you get to both feel like you and your army of good ā€˜uns are both always strong and numerous and victory is just right there and possible but also you are arrayed against a vast host of bad guys and have to be ever watchful and vigilant about losing the fight to this stenchsome tide of profligerate evil. Holy shit can you feel it? My heart is startin to shift up into Braveheart gear, its delicious. Who should we hate first?

Yeah thats a pretty good overview, lets keep going and get specific:

Ah ok were supposed to be mad at accents I understand that I think, its a pretty convenient way of knowin that someone was born in a different place than you and are therefore a Them deservin of disdane and sneer. Who else we got:

Whoa thats another good batch, we got The Criminal, the Homeless, Bicyclists, Activists, holy shit can you imagine including ANY of that awful bunch in a consideration of social responsibility!?

Hold on I need to check up on something here real quick.

Damn it looks like our boy Rich is somewhat of a innervater! But dont get too caught up in the specifics, Richard knows that we can do way better than just hatin who our respective news medias tell us to, look:

Oh yeah ok i think i am starting to see the pattern and purpose behind Richardā€™s mental martial arts movements. From what i can tell, I need to be 1) pretty constantly considering if there is anything at all ever gettin in the way of me doing whatever i want at any time and then when I identify a constrante, ANY barrier at all on my convenients or behavior I 2) simply identify the Them that is to blame for obstructin between me and 100 percent personal liberty. None of you would object to a man pursuin his personal liberty, right!? You better not, I got a whole lot of blank spaces left in the Haters section of my diary (dont worry its got constellations on the cover so its still masculine).

Lets try it out:

Oh yeah see how good it works!? A foolish amateur at this might think its hard or weird or wrong to get mad at somebody for being nice to somebody else but just remind yourself of the thinkin patterns weve learned and youll see that this so called ā€œgoodā€ ā€œpersonā€ is doin it on 1) your valuable time and 2) are a Do-Gooder, which we all know They are just so full of shit and probly think there better than me. And then yeah, theres that lil emotional ā€œwarm-all-overā€ treat we talked about. This is going great you guys. Lets do another one

Ok this might seem like a simple one of course its good to hate pedestrians, if someone is out here just WALKIN how are we supposed to know if they even have a car loan! But look closer can you see theres another important addition to our dance steps here? Its that rule at the end about but what about WHY are they in my way: If theyre doin theyre level best under difficult circumstances then yeah, of course dont run em over Richard is not a monster. But if theyre intentions or character is bad then fuckin hit the pedal hoss. You might be sayin: but how can I, with my human limitations, know whats in the heart of another? Well thats the best part of this one, you dont have to! Honestly. for ease of use its best in this system were usin to just go ahead and assume the other person is malicious or stupid, you can add some of each to your taste and likin. To ask me to do otherwise would be QUITE a inconvients indeed and we know what happens then. Haha i just realized this system even works to defend itself, thats some kinda elegants.

Lets turn our eyes back to our Sensei and watch as he executes this masterfully against some of the worst offenders in our so-called ā€œcivilized societyā€:

Ugh can you imagine bein so ignernt as to ask someone how did they make this good food you liked and appreciated? To me? Thats just about as rude as bein interested in someones guitar pedal setup. These people!

Haha watch though you can pretty easy flip it around if your left-handed or whatever:

Ugh can you imagine so ignernt as to think your dumb recipes are so special that you got to screen out someone who is maybe just bein polite? Thatā€™s just about as rude as bein all gate-keepy about your usin a Holy Grail which no shit. These people!

That was fun I felt about the same levels of heat writin both of those haha! Or maybe they were already the same because of how the sarcasm? I got a little turned around there but anyway, the main point is you really can throw any ol content you want in here folks, its the process what matters. Are there limitations you ask? Lets test some edges here:

Another masterful combo: we start with the easy and expected hate for people who let the dogs poop in your lawn, but then the unexpected Black Belt manouever of a muscular fist to each side of the head of a guy who DOES pick up his dogs mess! Haha he thought he was safe but nuh-uh bud. ā€œWould he even pick up his wifeā€™s shit from the sidewalk?ā€ Richard muses, in a normal-man fashion.

Who else might test the reach and might of our masterā€™s power?

Kids? No problem, throw em in. That one isnt too hard i guess because you can always hate the parents who are just letting their kid be joyful or creative or lettin their goddamn baby cry near me. (Yes, there are many such complaints in this book).

Theres gotta be a limit to this somewhere though right? Surely this aint a full panaseeya.

Whoa ok holy shit! Really, how far can this thing go? Like for example if durin a formative part of your life you were a heavy guy working as a waiter and it sucked and you got treated like shit:

Then surely you woudnt go real hard on that specific combo-meal of characteristics in your book, right? Like if you had a important weight loss journey or whatever, itā€™d be a little sad to turn around and hate all over folks who are bigger like you used to be, right?

Oh never mind, i guess we are supposed to contemptuous at them too, perhaps for not having the same discipline to fornicate there way to shapely hips and thighs like Richard did.

But DEFANITLY weā€™d guess that most people who had suffered as waitstaff to the rich might be MORE likely to have a little kindness and grace once they found themselves on the sittin end of the table, wouldnā€™t we?

Like it would be pretty crazy for a ex-waiter to even think of this kinda thing, let alone writin it up and putting it out in a book:

Theres a whole other page of these but you know what no. Because I think weve already discovered the disturbin but perhaps foreseeable truth: that the secret of Richard Smithā€™s Guide to Getting Even ā€˜pparently starts with the man in the mirror. To be a true master of aggreifed intitledment, you must learn to apply this system of thought and attribution to past versions of your own self. Its basically that part of empire strikes back that scared and confused us as kids and now we know why. And donā€™t forget: our past versions of ourselves started like one second ago. Like, theres one back at the beginnin of this paragraph, which i guess iā€™m supposed to scorn him too now. Which that might at first sound like exhaustion and miserable, but now that I say it out loud i can kinda see how the whole system and cycle might depend on applyin it inside first and welp just imagine the alternative of what if you dident in the name of Jesus Christ amen.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: FancyShark who still packs a broom mic in case revenge demands an Elvis verse and a hip shake.

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Exposing the Dangers Behind Martial Arts and Yoga

To view this content, you must be a member of 1900HOTDOG's Patreon
Unlock with Patreon
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Weapons of the Street

Thugs approach you with all manner of street weapons, the weapons of the street! Pipes, shards of glass, unshapen rocks, none, flamberge! Quickly! Read this!

It’s Weapons of the Street, 1984’s toughest guide to dick crushing. Like hundreds of other books, it was written by Dr. Ted Gambordella, and since I’ve already mentioned the dick crushing I am 80% done describing it. It’s what any karate expert would call “a perfect book.” Its cover looks like a game called Bash Stormers 2 for the Azargo Vextrack, and sorry I need to Photoshop something real quickā€¦

ā€¦ okay, I’m back. Where was I? Right, the sweet cover, but also it has the tone of a kick murderer’s alibi. Let me show you what I mean:

“There are a few instructions in offensive techniques,” is what Dr. Ted says right before he shows you 200 pictures of him turning his friend’s penis into a memory by way of stick and fist. “I do not condone any harm to your fellow man,” is what Dr. Ted says before building the largest, most beautiful monument to harm. Like many books before and after it, Weapons of the Street seems to think a disclaimer is a magic spell making all extrajudicial executions legal. And he’s right. I do not support any of this rad penis trauma. But fucking do it. Spin kick every problem you’ve ever had in the balls, which I do not intend nor condone.

So as we read, keep in mind that Dr. Ted wrote Weapons of the Street only for de-escalating club attacks peacefully. I’m not setting up some bit where he actually caves in every attacker’s dick and throat, I promise. Anyway, here’s the first move of the book, a standard non-harm defense against a stick attacker:

Step one: kill this fuck with his own stick.

I was lying, and so was Dr. Ted. The book contains only one defensive tactic and it is lethal vengeance. Here’s the second move of the book:

If someone is killing you with a bat, step on their dick. It is great advice and better karate. I’d tell you more, but the end of Dr. Ted’s sentence is missing. It was a stomp so powerful the text describing it was sucked into the vacuum the groin left behind. Or maybe this one was written by the attacker? “Hit the karate doctor in the head with a bat, wait, he’s throwing me into the ground, I should still be okay, hold on it looks like he’s lifting his foot to oh n”

Okay, we did two counter moves to never be used against stick maniacs. Enough defense bullshit, and that’s both me and the book saying that. It’s time to move on to situations where we are the stick maniac.

It’s only the third move of the book about never using karate to hurt someone and we are charging a man with a club, “preferably” one we stole from him, and breaking both his arms with a move Jackie Chan would need three days of rehearsals to land. Like I said, “a perfect book.”

Most self-defense manuals assume you have never heard of violence, much less this exotic style from the Orient. Not Weapons of the Street. By page eight, it is advising you to take a guy’s bat, knock one of his punches out of the air with it, and then snap his arms off at the shoulder. Well, not “advising” if a cop asks you where you learned how to do this, the sweetest goddamn shit he and the boys downtown have ever seen.

If you were worried all these moves were going to be complicated, don’t be. Sometimes Dr. Ted’s advice, well, again, not “advice,” you know what I mean, is to just hit the son of a bitch in the knee with your club. When someone’s kneecap is in fifty pieces, you can consider your punching issue with them resolved. If you’re a baby-penised coward. Dr. Ted is only halfway done with this move:

I think this is my area of expertise, and I’m genuinely confused. Dr. Ted wants you to use your stick to take away your enemy’s ability to walk and pee, and now he’s built some kind of lever on the remains of his dick? I’ve been staring at this picture for hours, for days, and don’t know how or why two men would find themselves in this situation. It looks like an alien improv team after an audience member suggested “Earth humans fucking!” It looks like Dr. Ted had this item in his inventory the whole game and his desperate guess at “use stick on balls” somehow did something. From concept to performance it is glorious, and sorry, I need to Photoshop something real quickā€¦

ā€¦ okay, I’m back. Where was I? Oh, fuck yeah: karate.

For information on how to squeeze the life out of a man with a chair leg, excuse meā€“ detain a man’s neck until help arrives, please see figure 18a or 18a again. I don’t know why this picture appears twice. There’s no way it could be a simple error. Dr. Ted doesn’t make mistakes because missing any of these moves by even one penis length would mean certain death. So I think doubling up this photo was a last-minute idea after the publisher saw how Dr. Ted finishes a choke. It would take a Photoshop genius to recreate the original, but luckily I know one:

I’m having a fun club choke messaround, but seriously, look at Dr. Ted’s next club choke:

That head is coming off. Weapons of the Street has assured me many, many different ways it’s only going to demonstrate how to peacefully deflect sticks, but this is how you turn a headed man into a spurting torso and grim trophy. Either I or the author are going crazy. The section on stick choking even ends with a man being pulled into two parts under the words “NOTE: I am not showing offensive techniques with the club.”

“Control the attacker till the police or help arrive?” This is how an excited spokesperson changes the way you slice cheese forever. And this is going to sound like I’m splitting hairs, but I’m not sure we needed a third stick strangle variation in a book explicitly about not hurting people with weapons. If you want that, Dr. Ted suggests you “refer to [his] book of karate weapons.” And now we have a whole new problem because I’m looking at the Dr. Ted Gambordella section of my library and he’s written “book of karate weapons” so many times I’m only 20% sure he’s talking about this one:

I know I keep getting distracted this article, but there’s no way we’re not going to open The Complete Book of Karate Weapons. I’ve seen how Dr. Ted uses karate weapons. The section on Karate Knife is going to be “easily use a foot kick to the dick.”

Holy shit, no penis kick guess has ever been so right so hard. But let’s get back to his book about not hurting people.

This plainly rules. Dr. Ted is suggesting we catch a baseball bat with our hand, easily, because we have sufficiently trained our hand. I’m going to pretend I know what that means so I don’t look like a pussy in front of Dr. Ted, but I’m worried I die if I miss this, and spend six months in a cast if I don’t. “Shut the fuck up and punch their stick in half,” says Dr. Ted, and it brings me so much joy to tell you I’m not kidding. The second part of this move is punching their stick in half with your non-shattered hand.

I imagine you’ll want to practice this a few times before you have a club suddenly swinging at your head, so the combo is club catch, club punch, club steal, twirl, club stab, side kick. Blue belts and above may want to add a flame cyclone or wolf summon, and remember you can triple twirl if you go into the combo with your jeans meter fully charged. Let’s move on to defense against chains.

Dr. Ted uses the standard ABCD defense for chain attacks. A.void the chain, B.lock the chain, C.ute dick attack, D.estroy the neck. People may criticize this for being too complicated, but not cool people who survive chain attacks. This is all you need for any manner of ropey attack, but for purely academic reasons, let’s take a look at a chain attack defense with fewer steps.

Is this simple enough for you? Field goal kick their fucking face. There’s no need to add a groin attack and a murder to every single one of these. That being said, there’s a couple more steps to this move. Let’s add a groin attack and a murder.

The best thing about Dr. Ted is he can’t help himself. Something inside him won’t let him say “use a back kick to create distance and escape.” If you swing a chain at him, he’s stomping on your heart until it stops. He can write “never do this” all he wants, I know Dr. Ted will be so proud of me when I kick someone’s heart out. “I didn’t teach you how to do that,” he’ll say with a tear in his eye. “In fact, what are k-kicks? You say they’re called kicks?” he’ll add after his lawyer whispers in his ear, then giving me the subtle nod of a withholding father.

Like he keeps doing, Dr. Ted forgets his book’s thesis and shows us how to kill someone with the weapon we’re defending against:

This one is a pretty technical defensive maneuver; you’ll know you’re doing it right if your enemy makes a gurgling sound followed by silence forever. But once again, enough defense. Now that we have that dead guy’s bike chain, let’s fuck some shit up.

Dr. Ted escaped from a Nintendo game and has no idea our world doesn’t work like this. He screams things like, “a chain can be used in place of hands for a +2 to all clinch moves I never showed you how to do this,” and no one has ever been brave enough to correct him. There is no other explanation for this:

Lure him into a trap so we can lasso his leg and pull him into a groin stomp!? This is a God of War quicktime event. Dr. Ted is teaching us special moves like we’ve spec’d ninety points into Whipmaster. Can you imagine the final thoughts of the poor bastard who brought this weapon to this fight? “I’m going to hit that unarmed guy with this, because what are the odds he’s specifically trained in bike chain and I’m upside down hold on it looks like he’s lifting his foot to oh n”

Let’s go over some broken bottle defenses, and by that I mean I stab you in the face with a broken bottle, which you’ll block, but it was all a trap so I can stab you in the dick with a broken bottle. It’s worth reminding ourselves again what we’re supposed to be doing hereā€“ NOT HARMING ANYONE. I feel like even without all the strangulations and donkey stomps to the heart, if your book on non-harmful weapon defenses includes any more than zero broken bottles in someone’s dick, you blew it.

I don’t know why you need a second attack after it occurs to you to introduce a broken bottle to someone’s penis, but here’s an idea: you could try stabbing someone in the punch with your broken bottle? The only danger with this one is that if I perform hand surgery slower than a punch, as unlikely as that is, I get punched. But I’m starting to think I might deserve it? I maybe started as the good guy in some of these scenarios, but that is not how any of them ended. When the police find me in a room with all these human heads, it’s hard to picture the conversation that leads to my Best Hero Citizen Medal. Sorry, I’m going to duck away for one last Photoshopā€¦

ā€¦ that was a fast one because the Humanitarian Service Medal already had a karate chop on iā€“ where was I? Oh, right! Defending ourselves against broken bottles! Did Dr. Ted ever consider grabbing one and pushing it into our prisoner’s eye so the filthy worm can get a reeeaal good look at how we’re going to carve him into minute steaks? Oh, he did? Fun!

So now we know the three basic ways to defend against a broken bottleā€“ hog stab, punch stab, and I’m not bluffing please make me prove it I’ll fucking kill you eyeball-first. So with that dickless scumbag’s life in your hands, let’s move on to Intermediate Pootie Tanging.

In another masterful understanding of time and how it flows, Dr. Ted suggests responding to a stab by taking off your belt and whipping your stabber’s eyes. He’s obviously dead from this, a corpse with no idea what killed it, but the move’s not done…

ā€¦ pull your belt back and slap your attacker in the eyes a second time. By now, regret should be reaching their dark heart, so use this opportunity to whip your belt again, locking itself around their neck the way belts work. Pull them by the improvised noose and bash their dick with whatever hands and feet you have free. Some Kung Fu fans might recognize this deadly technique, but not from the style of martial arts.

I think it might be time for a fun one.

Dr. Ted has gone fully karate hysterical. This is choreography for a movie called Hollywood Cat Cop, not a self-defense option. This is the base instinct anyone would have; it’s literally your only option here other than waiting to die. I’d also argue that despite finding ourselves in this unlucky situation, this move counts on a lot of things going our way. Here’s the next part:

None of this plan comes together unless your bashing is being carried out by Burpy and Clod Bulges, two twins playing themselves in Hollywood Cop Cat. An eight-year-old knows this wouldn’t work, and I know because I showed it to one and she laughed. With the honesty of a child, it truly didn’t occur to her these men could be serious. It’s so beyond the boundaries of possibility that even these men, who have dedicated their warrior lives to the impossible, are starting to realize how it must look. From this point forward, Weapons of the Street is a scrapbook of best friends henchman-goofing. For example, here is this combo’s finisher:

“Ha ha ha this is fucking stupid,” says Ted’s friend. “Ha ha, guys, let me do a dumb one,” says the other one.

This is what street weapons are all about. Sharing a laugh while you accidentally stab a dear friend. It’s my favorite book. “Alright, shut up, you knuckleheads. We need to get serious and wrap this thing up,” says author Ted Gambordella, Karate PhDā€¦

ā€¦ “Just kidding! FOOT AND STICK TORNADO!” Dr. Ted screams as he demonstrates the stupidest, button-mashingest idea. They took dozens of pictures of him flopping any limb in every direction and included every single one of them. There’s no way to know if they’re in the right order, nor any reason to care. This is how (spoilers) Hollywood Cop Cat drowns in a bag, not how you fight a crowd of men.

You could almost forgive this if it said, “Go nuts, die like a man,” but Dr. Ted has every detail of your battle planned out from the opening jumping jacks to the finishing eye poke. He’s calling out specific positions of these hypothetical gang members after multiple stick bashes. It’d be like a palm reader telling you, “Watch for the color green, and kick the man that’s to your left with a back kick into the stomach. You can then smash your club into the eyes and mouth of the man in front of you as you jab your fingers into the eyes of the man to your right.”

In the final move, the final move, Dr. Ted introduces the one thing his karate will never surviveā€“ comedy, comedy. And I don’t mean it messes up the timing by repeating the setup twice on the same page. I mean, does he think these self-defense moves hold up in a world where absurdity exists? The fact that any of these moves could be a joke means they all might be, right? Was he kidding this whole time? I don’t think so, but Dr. Ted being secretly sarcastic for 170 straight books is more plausible than someone using this karate to defend themselves. Still, it changes nothing. The fact that Dr. Ted botched a joke about shooting his friends only adds to the perfection of Weapons of the Street. Let’s go out on one last karate photo masterpiece. I love you, and karate blessings.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Vooster, who is always ready to kick dicks and stomp hearts.

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Afro Ninja: Destiny

To view this content, you must be a member of 1900HOTDOG's Patreon
Unlock with Patreon
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Dogfight Wild Tournament II šŸŒ­

Last week, I talked about Dogfight Wild Tournament, the fight and fight-like thing promotion produced by a Spanish podcaster. If you missed it, don’t worry, I can sum it up in one gif.

That’s from after the main event where Zdravko “Bad News” Tarnadzhiev (0-0) was finished immediately by a twirling skull bonk by Aitor Gaspar (0-0). It was more of a ballroom dance class accident than a combat sports match, but it led to a friendship that will burn eternal. Their many, many hugs and several long chats were the perfect ending to a four hour event with less than 10 minutes of fighting. This is a real, non-sarcastic pie chart I made to show how the event played out:

In the USA, that pie chart would represent a great trip for a chicken sandwich, but a catastrophic MMA event. But I guess in Spain they consider it such a success they held another one. So let’s talk about Dogfight Wild Tournament 2: Second Impact.

Their first event had slapping, size mismatch freak shows, and 2-on-1 battles, so this time they knew they had to get extra crazy with it. The opening match needed to set the tone with something super weird and barbaric. They did the opposite.

Dogfight Wild Tournament opens with a rematch between best friends and brothers forever, Zdravko and Aitor. “I am as happy as I’ll ever be,” their faces seem to say as they approach their staredown. “My life was empty without you, we should have a group nickname, what do you think about The Get Busy Boyz, I’ve missed you so much” their mouths seem to say. Normally, this is where competitors make intimidating faces at each other. Trust me when I say it’s unusual for two fighters to sparkle with joy and shirtlessly reminisce as if no one else in the room, the two of them alone with their love.

The fight itself isn’t so friendly. It’s something called a “MUERTE SUBITA” match, which my Spanish profesora did not teach me and Google thinks means “Get the best shopping deals on subita, Mort,” but it can’t be good. It might mean “human bullfight” because Aitor throws a series of wild charges, all of them miss, and Zdravko takes his back and smashes his brain in. It was a bad game plan. Coming at a Spaniard with a bull charge is like trying to kill a Brazilian with a soccer ball or attacking an American with a pie eating contest. In less than three minutes, Zdravko avenges his only loss. You know what comes next.

The two warriors embrace. These men share the same 150 seconds of total fight experience, but they also share a love stronger than any hammer fist, more reckless than any bull charge. Their hug lasts forever, it lasts until the sun stops burning.

The two brothers finally break apart, thank each other’s teams, and head back to the center of the cage for the official announcement. They decide maybe there’s time forā€¦

ā€¦ one more quick hug. One more perfect moment of flesh-to-flesh friendship.

They announce Zdravko as winner by TKO, his record rising to 1-1, maybe. I’m not sure if these count as pro MMA matches or illegal pit fights they got away with. Most people would call it a decent start to a potential combat sports career. To Aitor and Zdravko, it is nothing less than the Most Honored and Treasured Best Friendship World Championships, they tied, and their celebration is only beginning.

Mighty veterans of nearly threes of combat minutes, they drop to their faces in honored reverence to one another. A soulless monster might call it indulgent, far too much reverence paid to a prelim match on an off-off-off brand MMA event, but anyone with a heart can see something beautiful is happening. After only seven or eight punches and two concussions, these men found each other. The purity of their passion makes every lover you’ve ever taken look like a cheap whore. They are already hugging again before they’re fully back on their feet.

Everything is all they can give each other, so they do, but it’s not enough. They hug so many more times, once for every wish on every star. Somewhere in the slapping, swarming center of their love they have to know they can’t do this forever. Other fighters need to use this cage, they must know. But let them wait. Let them watch eternity crumble in the hereafter of their brotherhood.

“Let time fall away around us,” their arms say as Zdravko’s chest tattoos transfer onto Aitor backwardsly. Dogfight Wild Tournament fans knew to expect hugs in the Aitor vs. Zdravko rematch, but this was beyond any Dogfight fan’s imaginationā€¦

ā€¦ beyond any Dogfight fan’s dreams.

After a series of post-fight interviews, at least two too many, each one broken up by hugs, Aitor’s corner calls for a special announcement.

Here, after losing a fight by missing a takedown and getting violently out-grappled, his jiu-jitsu instructor promotes him to blue belt. It’s a weird time to do it. It’d be like interrupting a wedding to give a bridesmaid her merit badge for archery, right after she maimed the groom in an archery accident. Zdravko “Bad News” Tarnadzhiev, the winner of the fight, reacts to these drama nerds stealing his moment exactly as you’d expect:

He embraces his now blue-belted friend. This changing of the color of a losing rookie fighter’s belt here in Spain’s 28th greatest combat sports organization is so momentous, the Dogfight Wild Tournament host gives each of the men another post-fight interview about how it’s changed their lives. By my count, this is four interviews for the loser and three for the winner. There has never been anything like it. If this was a baseball game, it would be like stopping after one pitch so each infielder could write a book of poems about it, make firm, tender love to the center fielder, and present Kieran Culkin with a Golden Globe Award for playing the trombone.

In no rush to leave after only a few dozen interviews, ceremonies, and snuggles, the two men start doing silly poses. This is too much, far beyond my ability to describe. It’d be like stopping a hockey game after one minute to film a children’s show about two prison enforcers fucking, only it’s all bloopers. So I guess never mind, I had the perfect way to describe it.

You already knew this, but the silly posing eventually turns into sincere hugging. The announcer thanks everyone again for coming out for this great nighā€“ holy fuck, has there only been one fight so far? All these ceremonies and heartfelt speechesā€¦ I feel like I’ve watched 70 beloved Turkish bath owners retire.

They really need to get things moving. But firstā€¦

Yes. Tonight, there is no other place than Zdravko’s arms, no other blue than Aitor’s belt.

After only one hour and 32 minutes of broadcast, I’m not fucking kidding, Dogfight Wild Tournament 2: Second Impact moves on to its second event. And it’s nuts.

It is a two-on-two match with three referees, and not a single one of the seven men have any idea what the shit is happening or should be happening. These men are tumbling, twirling, and grabbing so randomly I think maybe they’re fighting by sense of smell? I looked up how to say “blind” in Spanish, but according to Google, “blind is a pizza that can be cured with sunlight or bleach, find horny blind widows in your area.” So, yes, everything in our modern world is broken, but nothing more so than Dogfight Wild Tournament.

It doesn’t really matter who won this fight because bashing someone in the back of the head while they’re busy isn’t sports. It’s rad as fuck, but let’s not belittle the chaos by awarding its lucky survivors with points. Next up is nothing less than the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.

These goddamn maniacs have fully recreated the set of Bloodsport. Suddenly, and for three fights only, the Dogfight fighters will battle like they did in the based-on-a-true-story movie, Bloodsport. It’s better than a brilliant idea. In an instant this makes it seem ridiculous for any fight promotion to have ever had a different idea.

It’s obviously not a perfect recreation of Bloodsport since it’s only a four-man tournament and, as we all know, the real Kumite had more competitors than that. Due to secrecy and protective magic, we’ll never know the actual size, but we know from Frank Dux that he holds the world record for most consecutive knockouts in a Kumite at 56. And that’s easy math. It means a Kumite has to have at least, let’s see, 2 to the 56 fightersā€¦ so about 72 quadrillion competitors to be a true Bloodsport. But four is close enough. Let’s see how a real fight plays out on this stupid ass ramp from the best film Bloodsport.

Jesus goddamn Christ. Five -five- seconds into the fight, “The Monkey King” throws a knee from halfway up the ramp and hits “El Ninja” so hard he immediately knows he fucked up. “I think we ran over a rotten pumpkin,” say the signals from his leg to his brain. These promoters were so worried about the set designer getting the nameplates and little katana sword right, they never checked to see if it was safe to do Muay Thai on an inclined plane. I’m not a physicist, but I’m good at reading faces, and this is the face of a man who was not expecting to turn a human skull inside out with his opening move:

The Monkey King looks like he walked in on his parents having sex with a cobra and they all leapt at him. He realizes what he has done so instantly, he is already dropping to his knees to pray to his Spanish gods before El Ninja’s lifeless body is done bouncing. This Bloodsport section went from fun to tragedy faster than sex with a cobra. It was like a birthday magician asking a boy if the eight of spades was his card while accidentally ripping his throat open with a jack of diamonds.

The next event is a women’s bare knuckle fight. It goes a full five rounds of brutal, cumulative hand and face trauma, and here is your winner:

You know a sport is great when someone is interviewing a colony of lumpy bruises growing on human remains and it was the WINNER.

Next up is a “NO RULES” match, which is strange because there aren’t a ton of rules in MMA already. In fact, there are so few that you could basically call this a “NORMAL PLUS DICK AND EYEBALL BITING” match. But since no one threw an eyeball bite, it ended up being a “JUST NORMAL” fight.

For about two minutes, “El Rey De La Calle” sat on top of “Hercules” and punched him in the side head, nagging the referee to stop it the whole time. “Sure, good idea,” the referee eventually agrees. Hercules is cranky about the loss, so he decides to start a new battle. This time Hercules will fight using the art of pantomime, and he will suffer a defeat far more painful than 80 punches to the ears.

Hercules begins his pantomime attack by standing in the center of the cage and staring at the man who just kicked his ass. Blankly. If he meant to do anything cool or interesting, he never got around to it before El Rey De La Calle started humping his dick at him. Round one of battle two goes to El Rey De La Calle.

Hercules answers back with a couple nods and a few aimless steps and El Rey De La Calle easily counters by making fun of the way Hercules gets punched. “Wah, wah, I’m a little girl who gets punched in the skull like this,” he expertly communicates. “Darn it, you’re right, I suck,” says the body language of Hercules. It’s a grotesque display of unsportsmanlike conduct, but remember: THIS MATCH HAS NO RULES.

Sensing victory, El Rey De La Calle unleashes a full dick pump assault, humping his groin at Hercules five different ways. On any other night, in any other place, this would be unthinkable, but NO RULES. Hercules desperately tries to communicate, “Let’s go back to fist fighting,” but there are enough rules that El Rey De La Calle knows that will never happen. He’s confident it is safe to ignore the threats and keep pumping, and all Hercules can do is nervously pace as he gets torn apart by pelvic thrusts. It’s the most unpleasant moment of the night, and we saw a woman’s head get slowly chiseled into a raspberry and watched a man fully die on the set of Bloodsport.

Next up is a five-on-one match, but not like you’re thinking. It’s one competent, experienced fighter taking on five much worse fighters, one at a time. There’s a way to spin this like it’s cool, but it’s basically a five round fight against a master of disguise with decent cardio and no chance in hell. It reminds me of ’80s pro wrestling when the Ultimate Warrior’s entrance music would kick in and he’d sprint to the ring and go apeshit, his muscle tassels flapping, his action makeup glistening. Then we’d meet his opponent, Tacoma’s Gus Hornsby, a man wearing gray panties who had already been in the ring the whole time and no one noticed. Gus would wave, get hit by all three of the Ultimate Warrior’s moves, and no one would ever see him again. Only the promoters of this fight league were brave enough to considerā€¦ what if you had to face five Gus Hornsbies in one night? “Don’t even joke about that; I can barely get the skidmarks out of his wrestling trunks with one of him,” ribs “Howling” Elenor Hornsby, his wife and local comedienne.

Oh no, what the shit is this:

Are these madmen going to seriously do a 3-on-1 fight!? This never goes well. It hasn’t been tested much, for a lot of good reasons, but the maximum amount of men you can fight seems to be a number less than three. For instance, here’s a 3-on-1 match they tried in Poland a few years ago:

That looks like a gun smuggler taking on a local high school’s yearbook staff, and the event’s director barely had time to switch cameras before the man was held down and mauled unconscious by six arms. This is just too many hands to be grabbing you when you’re trying to do something. And sure enough, here in the Dogfight Wild Tournament, the exact same thing happened as soon as they hit the gong. Oh, I should have mentioned they have a gong.

Eduardo Riego has already been tackled and pelted with elbows and fists before the clock has started to tick. It is obviously hopeless. But no one stops the fight. Maybe the referees believe in Eduardo, maybe they can’t see what’s going on in the Heathcliff cloud of violence, or maybe they lost perspective on how much injury is “dangerous” after a long night of head disasters. Whatever the reason, they let these three men pound on Eduardo for the entire first round. As he was pulled around and pinned down, Eduardo managed to land one (1) punch to the three little guys’ ninety-eight (98!). Not all of them were clean, and none of them were very powerful, but ninety-eight. It’s a troubling amount of damage to take, but to look at it another way, if you punch someone 98 times and they’re still coming, you and your shitty baby hands should have run away 97 punches ago.

Seven seconds into the next round, Eduardo says fuck it and starts pulling one of their heads off. He eats a lot of shots while he does it, but what’s twenty more punches at this point? If you look closely here, you can see why 3-on-1 matches might be a bad ideaā€“ none of those referees can tell if the man being choked is struggling to escape, trying to tap out, or already long dead. They look like first day zookeepers at a chimpanzee orgy. This is awesomely, stupidly unsafe. It was closest to the third one, by the way. He gets fully choked out and they have peel this poor comatose fucker out of Eduardo’s grip. And when the guy wakes up, he thinks he’s still in a fight. Everyone does their best to explain to him what happened, but he won’t accept it, and he remains confused the whole time they’re shoving him out of the cage.

This sad spectacle is not a morale boost for the doomed men remaining. They spend the rest of the round trying two different submissions on Eduardo at the same time and Eduardo uses their feeble attacks as an opportunity to rest.

Going into the third round, Eduardo has studied his opponents and formed a game planā€“ ignore their attacks and strangle one of them. Using this strategy, it only takes him ten seconds to pull one into a guillotine. The crowd is going crazy. They’ve been here over five and a half hours and it was all worth it for this absurd, impossible feat they’re witnessing. Eduardo eats a few more shots while he waits for his opponent’s head to run out of blood, but the tables turned one bloodless head ago. All Eduardo has left to do is beat one more (much smaller, less skilled, fully demoralized) man.

Eduardo eats one last punch as a haymaker bounces right off his chin and into certain doom. He really did it! He fought through two and a half rounds and 150 punches to beat three men at the same time! Dogfight Wild Tournament has 1700% too many post-fight interviews, exactly the right amount of hugs, and the world will definitely someday know it as “the fight league where that horrible thing happened?” but as of press time, it fucking rules.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Craig Lemoine, who only has a pathetic 54 consecutive Kumite knockouts.Ā 

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Dogfight Wild Tournament šŸŒ­

In 2023, a podcaster known as “The Spanish Joe Rogan,” Jordi Wild, put together a fight promotion and if you’re waiting for a twist in this half of the sentence, it’s not coming. It was called The Dogfight Wild Tournament, and nothing I’m about to say will make you think, “Oh, that’s not what I expected when I heard combat league started by the Spanish Joe Rogan.” It is an avalanche of insane, terrible, and begrudgingly rad choices.

Calling your event “Dogfight” is already a bad start. You generally don’t want to name yourself after something people specifically don’t want you to find. It’d be like naming your company Best Way To Kill Yourself Fashion Essentials or Homemade Dynamite Adult Diapers or Shelly Miscavige Fruit Snacks. Except those are bad examples because they’re million dollar ideas, every last one. Speaking of my judgment, the fact that I agree with so many of Dogfight Wild Tournament’s decisions only helps prove they were crazy.

The event starts with a full hour of pre-fight before Salah Hamli and Alex Quilez face off in an MMA match. They are new to the sport, and really demonstrate the furious accuracy and deadly precision you’d expect to see in the opening bout of a novelty fight card being broadcast on YouTube.

They fling fight-like gestures at each other for about a minute. Then, after sharing a D+ in their stage fighting group project, they go to the ground and Hamli gets a quick choke to end it 90 seconds into the first round. Which means after more than sixty minutes of talking and a full fight, we’ve seen one guy land one move. That’s a great thing to say if your wife asks you why you hated swing dancing class, but it’s a shitty thing to say about a fighting event. And the Spanish Joe Rogan is in no rush to get things going.

He gives a post-fight interview to the winner, Salah, who seems to have a lot to say about the one thing that happened, but he’s not asking for directions to the library, so my Spanish isn’t good enough to understand him. “That is a beard with a face, not the other way around” my notes say, as if that would magically turn into a joke here in the finished article. It didn’t! I only brought this part up because after the interview, they walked over and talked to the other fighter and I realized something was off.

I don’t think you have to have a degree in showmanship to know a crowd would prefer to watch another fight rather than hear from the loser of this low stakes, uneventful opening match and how his game plan didn’t involve getting choked. Each man has now spent twice as much time talking as they did fighting, and it’s not over.

Salah takes the microphone again and gives himself a second post-fight interview. If you’re not familiar with violence, it’s hard to explain how strange this pacing is. It’d be like the coach of the New York Giants calling a timeout after the kickoff to watch the bonus audition footage of Jean-Pierre LĆ©aud and Patrick Auffay on the Criterion Blu-Ray of 400 Blows. If you require a non-sports analogy, it’d be like taking a prostitute to a motel and then crawling into the ice machine to slowly grow old and die a virgin.

The next event is a slapping tournament, which is like rollerblading in that it’s a sport with only indignity and injury. Two men take turns swatting the other in the face, and the competitors of the Dogfight Wild Tournament slapping tournament made me realize something I never considered: you can be bad at slapping. As an athlete, and a sports league. I’ve watched professional slap fighting, and I thought the only qualification was needing $800 bad enough to take a decade off your life. The slappers in Dogfight Wild Tournament can’t aim, take a hit, or insert an earplug in less than 40 minutes. I know this because a weird jar of earplugs on the table is the only safety precaution taken. And I swear they lose track of how many they put in. A coroner is going to one day say, “This wasn’t even in the top ten cause-of-deaths for this poor fucker, but I found 127 earplugs in his skull cavity.”

This is going to sound crazy, but this combat league doesn’t have enough rules for their slapping. These guys are allowed to move their feet to get full power on their swings, they’re allowed to fake out their opponent, and no one cares where a slap lands. It truly is just two dorks going out there, cracking human heads, and hoping things work out. They don’t! One minute this guy is thinking, “Giggle! Isn’t it silly how I’m about to be slapped!” and the next he’s relearning shapes and colors with the applesauce that was once his mind.

Not all of the slaps are catastrophic. Some are just insulting hams to the side of the head. Because there’s no win condition in taking a slap. You either get your nervous system shut down or awkwardly absorb another earplug with your eustachian tube. I’d argue there aren’t a lot of positive outcomes from giving a slap either. You either embarrassed yourself by doing nothing or maimed a helpless member of your tiny, shrinking community. It’s a bad sport, and Dogfight Wild Tournament doesn’t make it better by adding 70 minutes of interviews and earplug fussing.

The next event is an undersize-glove boxing match between two women with a combined fight record of one. It goes the distance, and every bit of it is fully dissected in lengthy post-fight interviews. This means that after two hours, we’ve seen 12 minutes of combat, and 83% of that was two ladies gently and cautiously learning to box. As a spectacle of violence, Dogfight Wild Tournament is a below average Greyhound trip from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. So far. All that is about to change, because they’re about to get stupid with it.

Hell yeah. They’re going to have one man fight two men and see what happens. This is the kind of thing you’re supposed to book when you’re a group of maniacs with a podcast and no athletic commission. What’s extra crazy about this is the two teammates don’t combine to be the other guy’s size. All three men are basically the same weight class. Normally, when lunatics book a freak match like this, they give a size advantage to the handicapped fighter. For instanceā€¦

You might have seen this. It’s from a British event in 2024, and you can see what it looks like. It looks like career day in a third grade classroom where one dad is a minotaur and another dad hypnotizes children into attacking minotaurs. Fucking god damn it, look at it. It rules.

Dogfight Wild Tournament’s one-on-two match also rules, in a more competitive yet equally deranged way.

While the solo fighter, Cesar Alonso, is trying to figure out how to shake hands with two opponents at once, the one wearing a gladiator skirt charges at him with a desperate knee tornado. It’s closer to how you’d scooch past a Christmas tree than defeat a man, so Cesar ignores it and attacks his partner. Everything the two men try bounces off Cesar like a child support warning notice on a slap fighting world champion. Despite being mostly the same size, it is immediately clear how fucked these two men are. This is a “fair” matchup for Cesar not because his opponents are small, but because he is a pro fighter and these men have absolutely no goddamn idea what they’re doing.

After half a minute of human plinko chaos, Cesar creates some space and thinks about his next move. Half a millisecond later he’s done forming his strategy. It’s to just step over and obliterate the face of the guy in the skirt, and it couldn’t have gone better. The guy topples fifteen feet away, but lands his team’s best attack yet when Cesar sprints into his flailing foot. But it does nothing. It barely slows down the mauling. “Ha ha someone needs to stop this fight,” any sane referee would say. “Let’s see what happens next,” these referees say. But what happens next is so strange, I might need your help figuring it out.

So Gladiator Skirt Guy is clinging to a hopeless little brother headlock while his partner is trying to figure out a way to punch Cesar. He thinks about a body shot, then an overhand, decides on an uppercut, and I think he hits his teammate? All I know is he throws a punch into the tangle of flesh and then his teammate is left for dead on the mat. Did he knock out his own partner? Was it an accident, or a betrayal? Could it have been an unrelated panic attack? Maybe it was a side effect of not pulling off that skirt so violently? I have no idea because there were three people in the way and if a fight announcer is not asking if I like the beach, his Spanish words are meaningless to me.

Whatever happened, a man who can’t fight is now alone with Cesar. And unfortunately, dropping a fragile guy on his face was only the first hit in this combo. While Skirt Guy’s body is still bouncing, Cesar lands a left straight to the back of his partner’s brain. “Fucking GOODBYE,” say the man’s teeth and memories of his grandmother.

Cesar follows his last opponent’s mostly sleeping body to the mat, grabs his arm, and coils it around itself until he submits. I don’t mean he taps out. I mean he gives in. He lays down and waits for his arm to get pulled into parts and for God’s light to take him. He is literally in shock from arm trauma he could have stopped by asking his attacker to stop, and I feel like this might be why athletic commissions rarely sanction matches between a single trained mixed martial artist and a couple enthusiastic bros. There are no post-fight interviews after this match, despite it being the first time tonight viewers might have a lot of questions.

Next up is a bare knuckle boxing match between two inexperienced fighters that goes to a split decision, and if you’re a fight fan, that’s as dull as anything has ever sounded to you, and you’re right. It is three hours into the event, and including several slaps, the grand total of fight time is exactly 23 minutes and 8 seconds. If you subtract the time spent bare knuckle boxing, and you should, that’s a talking-to-punching ratio of 41-to-1. I don’t know how gentle things are in Spain, but in America, we call that a normal episode of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.

I have some good news. Up next is a classic freak show:

Raymison Bruno weighs 130 pounds, and he’s taking on Roger “Goliat” Dalet, a guy who came in six pounds over the limit for heavyweight and gave himself a cool nickname for his first and only pro fight.

This means he’s over twice the size of Raymison, and doomed as fuck. Because statistically speaking, if you’re fighting a little athletic guy, the worst thing you can be is a gigantic chubby one.

Sure enough, it takes a little over three minutes for “Goliat” to get caught in an armbar, and he spent almost all of that time trying and failing to land a piledriver. He might not be very good at fighting, but at least “Goliat” went into this spectacle of nonsense understanding the assignment. He was going to win by spinal murder or not at all.

At least I think that’s what he said in one of his several post-fight interviews. It was either that or, “I was given to you as a miracle, the world’s largest baby, and you monsters made me fight!” Again, my Spanish is not very good. “Stop calling me Ivan Dorito,” he might have said, but that could just be another mean thing I put in my notes.

It’s time for the final round of slap fights where one of the world class slap athletes misses the other guy’s jaw so badly he smacks him upside the skull and breaks his own hand. He does knock out an earplug, which the judges would like if they existed. Shattering your opponent’s hand with your head counts as a win in this sport, so the slap tournament ends the same way every slap tournament endsā€“ sadness by way of technical awkward.

Let’s move on to the main event.

At first I was disappointed to see it would be a normal MMA match between two similarly sized men, but then Zdravko “Bad News” Tarnadzhiev came out looking like fucking this. This is a main boss in a Scott Adkins movie. This is a man who makes a stranger emerge from the shadows and say, “It can’t be Tarnadzhiev. MI6 took him out in Obninsk.” Zdravko is the first time I’ve considered misspelling someone’s name in case they Google themselves.

Zdravko is up against normal-looking guy, Aitor Gaspar, and here’s another hot combat sports tip: If two guys with 0-0 records are about to fight, never bet on the gym-buff one. Zdravko lasted about 20 seconds.

As absurd as it sounds, Zdravko’s traps weren’t quite tall enough to prevent a cartoon windup head bash and Aitor used this to his advantage. The main event of the Dogfight Wild Tournament ends with the fastest knockout of the night, not counting the dumbshits who shattered to slaps, who you never should.

Aitor gives what viewers already worry is the first of many post-fight interviews. Unfortunately, during the brief mauling, something tore in Zdravko’s shoulder. I know this because when the camera cuts to him, he’s wrapped in several miles of bandage. I wasn’t being cute when I said how much they talk during this fighting event. They had time to treat a shoulder injury on the man with the largest shoulders I’ve ever seen in the time it took the guy responsible to finish a speech about it.

There are no hard feelings. In fact, quite the opposite. The two combatants share a tender embrace.

The tenderness escalates.

These warriors have only spent half a minute together, but those seconds were eventful. Intimate. This isn’t the ending of a battle. It’s the start of something else.

Zdravko gives his own lengthy analysis of the dozen or so moments he remembers from the fight, then he and Aitor shake hands again.

Shoulder injury be damned, it becomes another hug.

You saw this coming, but Aitor gives another post-fight speech where he congratulates his opponentā€¦

ā€¦ nay, his beloved opponent.

In a seventh emotional climax, at least six more than you’d expect from two dudes having their first MMA fight, Aitor raises the hand of his vanquished foe in sportsmanship. It’s a kind gesture, but arguably less kind than the kiss they already shared. It is also, by my watch, 14.8 minutes of celebration for every blow landed during their fight. If every fighter celebrated at this scale, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali would have started a standing 69 after the Rumble in the Jungle and ended it right aboutā€¦ November 19th, 2083.

You know what? I can’t think of a better way to end half a minute of fighting and 30 minutes of embracing than another hug. Let’s do it.

This is easily one of their best hugs, a bar of intimacy so ridiculously high I can’t even show you what I mean without fucking you. These two men are leaving nothing in the cage. They will never let it be said they didn’t give every last drop of their love on this night in Spain.

The camera finally pulls out to mark the end of this weird night of some combat, a little bit of slap, but mostly interviews and hugs. I believe broadcasters call it a pre-murder The Jenny Jones Show.

In the distance of the crane camera footage, you should be able to barely make out a familiar sight.

Speaking of making out, are these once-enemies locked inside the cage by the walls, or by their passion?

“Cut back to camera 2,” says the director, a tear streaking down his face, a glow in his heart. He watches Aitor and Zdravko’s 179th intimate embrace, his hand already dialing a familiar number. “I made a mistake,” he tells the voicemail of his ex-wife. “No one can live without love.”

Zdravko, overflowing with emotions, and probably concussions, raises the arm of his new brother one last time.

And while Zdravko is here next to the man who has hobbled him, maybe one last hug. Like every last thing in this unraveling disaster of an event, their affection is as unrestrained as a wild horse. It’s beautiful. Their, by my count, nine sincere hugs capped off a four hour fighting event where over 200 minutes were spent watching awkward rookie fighters discuss every second of awkward fighting except the 98 interesting ones. It may not have had much combat, but it had the most important thing. Love. May you each find your Aitor, my Zdravkos.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Jaber Al-Eidan, the proud inventor of the gladiator skirt knee tornadoā„¢.