ANIMAL INSTINCT IN A CAGE

You'll be relieved to know that eye gouging and groin attacks have been banned from the world's fastest growing sport.

The world's fastest growing sport, you may wonder. Football? Netball? Skate boarding? Surfing? Fly fishing??? Not sure you're all that close, but it's that exhilarating bloodfest called UFC, or Ulimate Fighting Championship.

This is today's version of the lions and the Romans at the Colosseum or, as one-time US presidential hopeful John McCain described, as 'human cock-fighting'.

It's where a couple of blokes are hauled off the streets, shoved inside a cage and, to the roar of the 'fans' (I don't think it's the same mob who sit in the Members at the MCG or play polo at Windsor), they are told to go for it. Anything short of outright murder seems to be the goal here. Aim to maim. The more blood the better.
Boxing is suddenly looking about as tough as badminton.

Everyone's into it, so we're told. The TV networks in the US can't get enough of it, and the sports lovers are, excuse the pun, fighting over tickets to the live performances.

Everyone except me. By my reckoning this is the most barbaric expression of sport to emerge since the fall of the Roman Empire.

To quote an American fighter by the name of Joe 'Daddy' Stevenson: "You don't really have to know the rules... Everyone understands about instinct.. Everyone understands about survival."

Animal instinct. Enough said.