Now showing on the channel which brings us Wimbledon ... cage fighting

The BBC is now showing cage fighting.The BBC is now showing cage fighting.
The BBC is now showing cage fighting.
Well, did you see it? The BBC introduced a new sport to its roster last night, joining tennis, athletics, snooker, indoor bowls, some rugby, a bit of cricket, the Badminton Horse Trials, sliding down snow-covered mountains on a tea-tray, the It’s a Knockout game of picking up eggs with an industrial excavator - oh, and charades.

It’s cage fighting. There was a live contest from Paris with the promise of more to come. Mixed Martial Arts has been keen on wider exposure beyond subscription-only services and the Beeb has obliged.

The Corporation is conscious about diversity and continues to chase that most slippery of customers - the luge competitor of audience categorisation known as the young person. I get all that, but cage fighting on the odd occasion I’ve seen it puts me in mind of a suburban barbecue reaching the edgy late-afternoon juncture when two dads will clamber onto the kids’ netted trampoline at the bottom of the garden. Did one of them make a pass at the other’s wife? Or hold onto a borrowed strimmer for too long?

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Cage fighting enthusiasts will hate that. The Daily Telegraph’s cage fighting correspondent - yes, really - will hate that. Obviously I was joking about the Beeb’s modest collection of sports - it has recently lost the rights to charades to Channel 5 - and maybe I’ll give cage fighting a go. One of the top guys last night was Michael “Venom” Page. I look forward to his bout against the brawny Scottish challenger, Jimmy “Petal” McTumshie.

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