AMERICANS OF A certain age - baby boomers and older - were conditioned to believe that the distilled essence of our national identity was everything good and wholesome, like, say, baseball and apple pie.
In the eighth year of the 21st century, even baseball, with its lingering taint of performance-enhancing drugs, no longer seems as unspoiled as it once was. And for many thrill-seeking U.S. citizens of Generations X and Y, the essence of entertainment often boils down to sex and violence.
Those two staples of modern culture will be amply displayed Saturday night, when history of sorts is made with CBS' first prime-time, over-the-air telecast of a burgeoning cultural phenomenon known as mixed martial arts.
Promoter Gary Shaw, the president of EliteXC Live Events, and CBS executives are trumpeting the event at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., as a signal that what had been widely regarded as a cult activity finally is ready to go mainstream.
CBS plans to air 2-hour telecasts of four cards each year under the terms of a multiyear agreement.
Five of the 12 bouts on Saturday's card will be televised, the main event of which pits "legendary" street fighter-turned-MMA headliner Kimbo Slice against a 6-5, 265-pound Briton named James "Colossus" Thompson. It's scheduled for three 5-minute rounds, but the likelihood is that the ending will be quick and emphatic.
"Kimbo's longest fight has been, like, 45 seconds," said Karyn Bryant, who will do cageside reporting as part of the CBS announcing team. "Anyone with a short attention span is going to have to check this out."
What first-time viewers are apt to experience is either a revulsion to the inordinately high violence quotient, or the vicarious, primal fascination that has made MMA possibly the hottest growth property among newer or nontraditional sports.
David Dinkins Jr., who will produce the landmark telecast after doing a series of MMA events for pay-cable Showtime, understands that the sport might not be for everyone.
"We are sensitive to the violence level," said Dinkins, son of the former New York mayor. "I think we are going to see how far we can go. We are usually able to take a lot of liberties on pay-per-view and Showtime. We don't want it to be too graphic and we don't want to turn people off, but we want to be true to the sport."
