http://mmajunkie.com/2015/03/from-c...s-dawg-fight-where-combat-sports-is-laid-bare
"There’s a scene in Billy Corben’s documentary film “Dawg Fight” in which two exhausted fighters, standing on opposite ends of a small, crude boxing ring, appear to be giving serious consideration to getting the hell out of there and going home.
Both of these men will be dead before the film is finished – one from a gunshot, the other from a police Taser – though of course they don’t know that yet. All they know right then is the reality of the fight, which is brutal and sloppy and ugly and raw, the way untrained violence often is.
In one corner, a man is doubled over from exhaustion, complaining of blurred vision. In the other, just a few feet away, his opponent is busy getting the blood wiped from his face as his friends assure him that the cut over his eye isn’t as bad as he thinks.
Both seem like they’d rather call the whole thing off. Neither seems like he’s going to get that chance.
This is the point where, as I was watching the movie, I started to wonder whether Corben’s attempt to capture the world of semi-official, absolutely illegal backyard brawling in one poor Miami neighborhood – a “twisted version of the American dream story,” as Corben later described it to me – had also captured something basic about the nature of combat sports.
At first glance, this had seemed completely separate from professional fighting. It was just some tough guys who “trained” off and on in their own backyards, showing up to throw haymakers at one another’s awkwardly raised chins while paying customers from the neighborhood watched. It was savage without being particularly enjoyable. It was artless violence. It was the kind of fighting that gave fighting a bad name.
It seemed especially uncomfortable when those two fighters reached their breaking point at roughly the same time. Clearly, these guys wanted to quit. If they’d been alone in that backyard together, they almost certainly would have......"
"There’s a scene in Billy Corben’s documentary film “Dawg Fight” in which two exhausted fighters, standing on opposite ends of a small, crude boxing ring, appear to be giving serious consideration to getting the hell out of there and going home.
Both of these men will be dead before the film is finished – one from a gunshot, the other from a police Taser – though of course they don’t know that yet. All they know right then is the reality of the fight, which is brutal and sloppy and ugly and raw, the way untrained violence often is.
In one corner, a man is doubled over from exhaustion, complaining of blurred vision. In the other, just a few feet away, his opponent is busy getting the blood wiped from his face as his friends assure him that the cut over his eye isn’t as bad as he thinks.
Both seem like they’d rather call the whole thing off. Neither seems like he’s going to get that chance.
This is the point where, as I was watching the movie, I started to wonder whether Corben’s attempt to capture the world of semi-official, absolutely illegal backyard brawling in one poor Miami neighborhood – a “twisted version of the American dream story,” as Corben later described it to me – had also captured something basic about the nature of combat sports.
At first glance, this had seemed completely separate from professional fighting. It was just some tough guys who “trained” off and on in their own backyards, showing up to throw haymakers at one another’s awkwardly raised chins while paying customers from the neighborhood watched. It was savage without being particularly enjoyable. It was artless violence. It was the kind of fighting that gave fighting a bad name.
It seemed especially uncomfortable when those two fighters reached their breaking point at roughly the same time. Clearly, these guys wanted to quit. If they’d been alone in that backyard together, they almost certainly would have......"
