ANCIENT LOVE OF BLOOD STILL WITH US.

Byline: JIM GORDON

New: The Anti-Fan blog at www.theantifanblog.com

It's not every sports story that makes me think of a passage from the Confessions of St. Augustine, but I stumbled on one last Sunday.

Dan Rafael's ESPN report on Saturday's welterweight title fight in Las Vegas, Nev., began this way:

"Well, it lived up to its billing, didn't it? Boxing fans, with sky-high expectations for the fight between Antonio Margarito and Miguel Cotto, appropriately named 'The

Battle' by promoter Top Rank, got exactly what they asked for: A riveting slugfest with

a dramatic ending that left

the throbbing crowd of

10,477 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in ecstasy."

By a Merriam-Webster definition, ecstasy is a state of being beyond reason and self-control, of overwhelming emotion and rapturous delight.

In Book VI of the Confessions, Augustine tells the story of a young man, Alypius, who arrived in Rome in the late 300s to study law only to be seized with what Augustine calls an obsession for gladiatorial games.

Alypius was obsessed with the games, yet he detested them and managed to avoid them until, one day, some "friends" physically coerced him into an ampitheater.

He resolved to keep his eyes closed, but he didn't plug his ears, and when the crowd roared at the fall of a gladiator, curiosity got the best of Alypius. Thinking he could handle the horror, he opened his eyes.

"As soon as he saw the blood, he at once drank in savagery and did not turn away," wrote Augustine. "His eyes were riveted. He imbibed madness. Without any awareness of what was happening to him, he found delight in the murderous contest and was inebriated by the bloodthirsty pleasure. He was not now the person who had come in, but just one of the crowd "

One might say, like the rest of the crowd, he was in ecstasy.

What is it about violence that so beguiles us? Boxing isn't the only offender. The rise in popularity of mixed martial arts is disturbing, but so is the delight we feel from watching an especially hard hit in football -- over and over and over again in a highlight reel. Wait -- now let's see it again, this time in super slo-mo.

Not fair, you say. Yes, people are hurt in boxing but don't usually die -- as they did in the gladiatorial games. And football players walk away from those hard hits -- well, usually.

All that is true, but it's still -- especially boxing and mixed martial arts -- brutality organized and shown for profit, and I suggest the difference is in degree, not in kind.

George Orwell once said, "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting."

Ah, ecstasy.

CAPTION(S):

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