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Brawl Sports
Ultimate Fighting and More with Steve Sievert

Although HDNet Fights' Reckless Abandon show Saturday night at American Airlines Center in Dallas was the fledgling promotion's second event, it was my first taste of Mark Cuban's brand of MMA.

A scheduling conflict prevented me from attending HDNF's first show in October and, quite frankly, I'm just too cheap to pop for the high-def package on my satellite system, so I had yet to experience the sport's newest creation.

After getting a look, I can sum up HDNF's second go-around in a word: impressive. Cuban and Co. have set a course to be a decidedly different player on the MMA scene, and, so far, mission accomplished. However, charting a new path is not without risk. More on that and how HDNF can further refine itself a bit later in this review.

On to the show ... once I settled into the best seat I've ever had at a fight event —I could literally stand up and grab the cage with an outstretched hand — the first thing I noticed about the atmosphere of the in-house production is how dissimilar it is from a UFC or EliteXC show. There's no glass-cracking music, no scantily clad ring-card girls or dancers gyrating cageside and zero theatrics.

Fighters first HDNF is presented as a true sporting event, with the emphasis of the show placed on the fighters and what happens inside the cage, not around it. It's a type of "thinking man's" approach to the sport supported by two elements of the production I saw for the first time at an MMA event: fight commentary designed for the arena crowd and the use of real-time fight statistics.

The commentary came from Matt Lindland and Tim Hughes (IFL's ring announcer), who were stationed on the arena floor by the stands. Lindland and Hughes set the table for bouts by discussing fighters' backgrounds and also offered commentary between rounds, dissecting what went down in the five minutes of action. Between fights, the pair also interviewed several personalities in attendance, including Cuban, Randy Couture, Andrei Arlovski and Ken Shamrock.

The approach essentially replaces the fighter sound-bite packages that the UFC and other promotions use to set the scene for bouts, and fans seemed to enjoy hearing from the likes of Cuban and Couture. Apparently, they could have done without Shamrock. He was met with a smattering of boos.

The stats, provided by CompuStrike, gave fans an at-a-glance look at the percentage of connects landed by each fighter and tracked takedowns and submission attempts. It's a helpful tool, especially for fans new to the sport.

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