I’ve admit right off, I’ve always been prejudiced against books that include footnotes, so I groaned a tad when I saw L. Jon Wertheim’s BLOOD IN THE CAGE: MIXED MARTIAL ARTS, PAT MILETICH, AND THE FURIOUS RISE OF THE UFC included them. If you ask me, footnotes should only exist to tell you what the acronyms S.H.I.E.L.D. and A.I.M. stand for, and to refer us to whatever back issue of a comic book the characters happen to be referring to at the moment.

However, as I actually read the footnotes, I saw that they included a great story about Steven Seagal getting his ass kicked by an old dude named Judo Gene LeBell. And I gotta admit, that’s a great use of a footnote. I’m still not a fan of footnotes and find them distracting, but in this book, many of them deal with various forms of violence with a smattering of sex and even bank robbery tossed in, so I guess I can deal with it.

BLOOD IN THE CAGE tells two stories that are intertwined, yet distinct: the story of the rise of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC for short) and the story of Pat Miletich, who was a great Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter and is now one of the premier MMA trainers in the world. Reading the description of the book, I wasn’t sure how this technique would work, but the author actually does a great job of seamlessly melding the two.

Basically, the book follows Miletich through his troubled life and his legendary status as the toughest man in Iowa until the point where he sees a flyer of his karate school advertising a seminar for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and then he attends said seminar, at which point BLOOD tells the story of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the Gracie family which originated the technique. The way I describe it sounds kind of clumsy, but it works pretty well.

I’m a fan of MMA, but I’m not quite a hardcore fan, so I wasn’t familiar with a lot of Miletich’s story and how significant he was to the whole rise of MMA. The two stories actually have a lot of parallels: Pat goes through a lot of personal and professional struggles trying to actually make a living through fighting, while the UFC actually came this close to going under, thanks to the efforts of John McCain and various critics who declared it “human cockfighting” and got its pay-per-view matches taken off of most cable systems.

In Pat’s case, he was saved basically through hard work and dedication, and the UFC was saved when it was bought by Dana White and the Fertitta brothers. White is a guy whom I’ve seen on TV kind of acting like an arrogant prick, and I wondered what his deal was. I had just kind of assumed he was a big-mouthed figurehead who was buddies with the brains behind the outfit, but come to find out, the dude actually is the brains behind the whole thing.

He still seems kind of arrogant, but he’s earned the right by being the guy with the brains and the vision to take the UFC mainstream. Of course, with UFC’s success, it appears that the fighters themselves may be getting a raw deal in terms of money, and that part of the story is told as well. Miletich himself gets screwed over by White, and it seems he isn’t the only one.

Overall, I really enjoyed Wertheim’s book. I learned quite a bit from it, and I’d say if you’re interested at all in MMA or UFC, then it’s a must-read. I will say I caught one factual error that on its own wasn’t a big deal, but did slightly change the context of what the author was trying to say. It’s possible a hardcore fan will find a dozen more, but on the whole, this was a fairly quick, enjoyable read.

If nothing else, it’s worth reading just to find out why fighter Luke Cummo drinks his own urine. It’s one of those theories that sounds so crazy, it almost makes sense.

Source: Eric Lyden