There was widespread shock last night when, in the wake of Conor McGregor's defeat to Khabib Nurmagomedov, a fight broke out after the fight.
It was supposed to be an evening of bloodshed, of violence, an exhibition of man's near unlimited capacity for cruelty - and instead it became an evening of bloodshed, of violence, an exhibition of man's near unlimited capacity for cruelty.
Nurmagomedov, having dispatched with Conor McGregor and finding his desire to lay low his fellow man still unsated, clambered out of the octagon's confines to attack a member of McGregor's team, Dillon Danis, who had apparently been goading him throughout the match.
"It was shocking," said Lyle Clifden, a spectator at the event in Las Vegas' T-Mobile Arena, "It was very shocking, I mean, to say I'm shocked would be an understatement. I'm shaken - because of the shock you see... I don't know if I'm quite conveying to you just how shocking it was, having bought a ticket to spectate on a fight, to then see - of all things - a group of people absolutely pummeling seven shades of the the back-door pantry's finest out of one another. To, perhaps put in context just how shocking this was to see, imagine if you will, you own a beloved labrador - let's call him Alan; now imagine returning home one day to see that Alan, your beloved labrador, has been turned into a fridge-freezer - that's about the level of shockingness we're dealing with here.It's at the 'labrador-turning-into-a-fridge-freezer' level of shockingness."
When we asked Lyle Clifden what had gotten him interested in MMA in the first place - and warned him that were his answer to include any of the words 'shocking', 'labrador' or 'fridge-freezer', then we would do him serious harm, he duly obliged.
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"I consider myself something of an anthropologist - a student of the human condition. As such, I have always been fascinated to observe extreme examples of man's inhumanity to man and, after Comedy Central stopped showing re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond, I found MMA to fill that void."
Another spectator said, "I am perfectly willing to see two men shed all vestiges of civilisation and commit crimes that should be considered nothing short of GBH on one another's persons, to a point where they are both reduced to bloodied, whipering husks - so long as all of this takes place within the confines of a sort of octagonal structure. But it turns my stomach to see acts of violence committed in any forum that does not fit these very specific geometric parameters. We wanted unadulterated violence, but not like this!"
The world still reels from the fallout.
