Home > The Magazine > Features

Thursday 4 December 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Cage-fighting man

'Kill him, Jimmy!' A night at the cage fight

Steven Berkoff

Wednesday, 29th August 2007

So we went to Wembley Arena to witness for the first time what is called ‘cage fighting’.

So they turned up just before the fight started, scheduled from 6 p.m. onwards, full of that blokish, shouty enthusiasm, poking gestures, yelps and shouts to mates, underdressed, just in T-shirts, blazoned in tattoos, clutching Coke cans, puffing on snouts and quite buoyed up, larfin’ their heads off at nothing in particular, and occasionally a serious muscle-wrapped beast would stroll by with his bird, well pumped-up with arms entwined with tattooed snakes.

We then decided to at least take our seats and breathe in the atmosphere before the match. We threaded through the corridors which sold nothing apart from booze and hotdogs at high prices and then entered the arena. The last time I was here was to see the famous Viennese riding school, which was indeed astonishing. We found our ‘comped’ seats, graciously arranged by my mate Dave Legeno, who was down to battle halfway through the evening. Legeno is a warrior of a bloke whom I met on a movie in which I had a walk-on role. During a chat this actor confided to me that he was also a ‘cage fighter’, which I found astonishing. Out of dumb curiosity one night — failing to see anything on the box which interested me — I had watched a few minutes of ‘cage fighting’ and had never seen anything so savage, so disgustingly brutal in my life. So when my new acquaintance revealed his ‘other life’ my attention shot up several notches and I regarded this actor-fighter with no small degree of awe.

He then invited me to witness his big punch-up at Wembley a month hence, and so here we were. As we entered the arena we were blasted with sound, a kind of cheapo rock beat which thundered through our entire bodies. The arena was just a quarter full at this stage with the flotsam and jetsam of the Brit world. A few were ‘dressed’ for the occasion in leather with cut-off sleeves, some with punk hairdo’s and Essex birds yacking on the mobile. I said a quiet prayer of thanks that at least I wasn’t sitting with the hoi polloi but in the posh seats at the front.

I’d bought a programme for a fiver and studied the form. These were the Cage Rage championships apparently, subtitled ‘Hard as Hell’. We were in for quite a treat. Outside the cage sat a group of judges and the fighters’ supporters and a roving TV cameraman. The photos staring out of the pages of the programme all looked tough and, indeed, as hard as hell. They didn’t look like boxers, except maybe a few, but most looked like killers, assassins or gladiators in a Ridley Scott movie. They were as impressive a bunch of men as you were likely to come across just this side of hell.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 Next page

More articles from: Steven Berkoff | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

What I learned from the Somali pirates

Aidan Hartley

Aidan Hartley says that Somali piracy is very well-organised and efficient and is opposed publicly only by militant Muslims — who may yet seize power in Mogadishu

New Sondheim: enjoy it while stocks last

Gerald Kaufman

Gerald Kaufman is enthralled by the first Sondheim premiere in 14 years. A minor work Road Show may be, but it is still worth much more than anyone else’s musicals

The law applies to Damian Green, too

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle is reluctant to join the journalistic herd in its unqualified outrage at the Tory MP’s arrest. But it is certainly time to put the police under the microscope

After Baby P: the crisis in child foster care

Mary Wakefield

Mary Wakefield talks to a courageous woman who blew the whistle on the deep systemic failures in the foster care service — and whose only reward was to be hounded and vilified

The global force behind Mumbai’s agony is in our midst

Stephen Schwartz

Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi say that LET — the Army of the Righteous — is a worldwide Islamist organisation which is well-established in Britain. The Mumbai atrocities are further proof that the march of Islamic extremism is the central fact of our time

In perfect harmony

Henrietta Bredin

Henrietta Bredin talks to the conductor Brad Cohen, who mentored Alex James in Maestro

Murdoch’s big secret is that he doesn’t have one

Michael Wolff

Michael Wolff reveals how he secured Rupert Murdoch’s co-operation for his biography and discovered that this media titan has no interest in posterity. He is, at heart, a city editor

Remembrance day salutes man’s ancient instincts

James Delingpole

War has a fatal attraction for men, says James Delingpole. Those who fall in combat are indeed the best and the bravest — and we shall certainly need their like again