Two men with the skin of old baseball gloves and the haggard face of a retired hooker spat words at the television screen hanging over the bar. The glowing box, dangling over a lumpy, female bartender, displayed a future fight between John Dodson and Jussier Formiga. Punches. Kicks. Knees. Always moving. Fighting. With my eyes fixated on TV’s pugilistic poetry, my nachos hardened. Stale. The men continued to talk.

“Why doesn’t he just knock him out?”

“I know, right? God, these guys are terrible man.”

Fists turned into flurries and the minutes turned into rounds. My brain was soaked in whiskey. I swiveled on my bar stool. I knew taking a sip after every nerve-damaging exchange would be a game that would haunt me during the Dodson-Formiga fight.

With only two minutes remaining in the fight, the auburn booze turned poisonous. The bartender dropped a glass. Lights flickered. Signs on the wall shuttered. I heard but never saw salivating, wild-eyed creatures. Their voices reached the unnerving pitch of a drunken sorority girl as the final seconds of the fight waned off the clock.

“Oh. My. God. What a boring fight!”

“Dude what ******* garbage.”

“I can’t believe I just spent time watching that bull****.”

I had heard these voices before. They were the uninformed suburban mother at her child’s football game (“just do a touchdown”). They were over-privileged college graduates interviewing for their first job (“what do you mean I have to start at only $40,000”). They were the crescendo of boos that resonated during any UFC fight (“boo…Just kill him”).

The Great Movement of the Sanctimony Age.

Too entrenched to move; too drunk to debate, I vow that from here on out, I will become a reclusive mixed martial arts fan. Or not...