Did anyone even know that Mayweather was scheduled to fight for his 49th straight victory? I have to admit, I had no clue. That’s how banal and blah boxing has become. Once the most ‘physical’ of sports it is now finding it hard to get an audible creak out of the turnstiles.

It is being eclipsed by the Peruvian necktie, the Thai Plum and the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. That’s not some exotic holiday itinerary but a preliminary introduction to a whole new world of gratuitous viciousness.

For those who like their viewing served with gore and gristle, fear not, the bloody baton has been passed most effectively to this new monster on the block...Mixed Martial Arts. If you have been taught to believe that Martial Arts are all soaked in pride and honor and used purely for the purpose of self defense, MMA swiftly disenchants you of any such notion. It takes the so called ‘honorable arts’ with all the bowing and scraping and turns them into a pub brawl and then some.

If you are ever trawling the channels on your set and you come across faces crimson with blood you are watching the MMA in one of 36 countries where it is telecast to a riveted audience not to mention the full stadium that takes you back to the frenzy of Caesar’s circus maximus and a gladiatorial din-din for the lions. The violence is for real and is appealing to hundreds of thousands of educated, well to do young men and women in the under 34 segment who have found wrestling comical and boxing bland and their own lives so much vanilla.

This lot want their pound of flesh and blood and they are getting it under the banner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) which controls the MMA franchise and is literally making money hand over fist. What it has done is strangle the Marquis of Queensbury with a choke hold and break the spine of his rulebook. Beside choke holds, everything goes and the gouging and the spitting and the twisting of necks and arms and legs is all integral to this suddenly fashionable ‘sport’ if you can call it that. It pretty much happened overnight when no one was tracking its popularity spike.

The fact that the numbers are increasing exponentially signposts the jaded appetites of the now generation and UFC is now well over the $1 billion mark in value. The square boxing ring has been swiftly replaced by the octagon and instead of cushioned gloves you have fists in tiny cut mittens for what is three five minutes rounds of sheer mayhem. So why is it being allowed when you think of the unpalatable fallout that MMA fighters are twice as like to pick up a fight in a social setting and have the worst record of marital abuse of any sports discipline and I use that word loosely.

There is a simple answer. It makes money and there is a market out there for blood sport. The latency in that category left unsatisfied after the sun set on the golden age of boxing and scarcely touched by the WWF antics found some comfort in the advent of extreme sports until the UFC took the punch to a whole new level and converted into a fix for junkies who need violence.

One time presidential candidate John McCain called it ‘human cockfighting’ and others against it label MMA as organized brutality. But that said, the screaming, shrieking fans wanting to see the ‘kill’ are clearly enough in number to give the UFC pulling power in the ratings race and even top publications have had to acknowledge that MMA is a contender for enough eyeballs to take on conventional sports during prime time. The sponsors are lining up.

As it spreads across the globe making a mockery of the stylized demonstration of traditional martial arts the Mixed version promises real blood, real scars and the snap, crackle and pop of breaking bones and joints out of the socket. In HD and throbbing color.

If the UFC goes public it might well be a bloody good investment.