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In a sports world drunk with scandal and overkill, in an era when pastimes such as poker, cooking and even modeling are portrayed as competition, why not a couple guys brawling in a cage?

Why not a mash up of various martial arts?

Why not Ultimate Fighting?

It is this generation’s pro wrestling, and the athletes are today’s versions of Roman gladiators. It’s the real thing, as primal as it comes.

Fighters square off in an octagonal cage. There’s nowhere to hide. They punch, kick, elbow, knee, throw and grapple, using every discipline from jiu-jitsu to boxing. The bout ends when one fighter surrenders (known as tapping out), the referee stops things if one starts pounding the other into mush or it goes the distance and judges’ cards decide the winner.

Blood spews from vicious cuts, knockouts are routine and snapped bones are not unheard of.

The brutality of mixed martial arts (MMA) is matched by its popularity nationwide, and Baton Rouge is right in the thick of things. Recent live and even televised events have attracted hundreds, if not thousands, of spectators, men and women, young and old.

A local business called the Gladiators Academy on Florida Boulevard throbs with activity as dozens of people work out there regularly. Some local entrepreneurs are finding success tapping into this rough and ready market for violent action.

To grasp just how big MMA has become, consider 31-year old Sterling Byrd of Baton Rouge. He gave up the real world—Byrd was the finance manager for Brian Harris Porsche/Audi—to create and market apparel related to the sport. His company sells t-shirts, hats and other paraphernalia to MMA fans, creating for him a fulltime job.

“I was involved in MMA since it came out in ’93,” Byrd says, while hawking merchandise at a stand in the River Center lobby a half-hour before the start of Capital City Carnage, a fight card held the last Saturday in August .

“I trained but didn’t compete like these guys do,” Byrd says. “Anyway, my girlfriend and I were watching a UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) fight, and I’ve always said, ‘Beat to Sleep’ when somebody gets knocked out. And she’s been in the clothing business forever, and she said I needed to do something with that.”

So Byrd got the Web site Beat2Sleep.com, got a logo and created the clothing line.

“Everybody loves the name,” he says with pride.

Of course, Byrd concedes, not everyone is “beat to sleep.” Fighters can “tap out” to let the ref know they’ve had enough.

“Nobody wants to see anybody tap out,” Byrd says. “They want to see punishment. They want to see somebody get beat to sleep.”

Byrd, who wears a kilt to the events, supports the fighters, keeping them in Beat2Sleep apparel.

“I just love it,” he says.

A Google search for mixed martial arts produced 4.4 million hits in early September. Ultimate Fighting? It got 37 million results.

If you’re not watching the weekly shows on Spike TV—UFC Unleashed and The Ultimate Fighter reality show—your neighbors probably are. Or definitely their teenage kids. Or maybe your kids’ teacher.

Don’t laugh.

Andy Chapman is a history teacher at Crestworth Middle in Scotlandville. He had to miss school the Friday before Capital City Carnage to make weight and go to the weigh-in.

Chapman, who wrestled at Baton Rouge High and graduated from LSU in 2004, also coaches wrestling at McKinley High School.

“I love coaching, but I missed competing. I was at the point in my wrestling where I could try out for the Olympics, but I’m not that good,” Chapman says with a smile. “So this gives me a way to compete.”

One thing you hear repeatedly from MMA fans is how it’s so much better than boxing, a sport that’s been flawed beyond belief the past decade and has virtually driven itself into the ground. MMA is simple and raw and, at least for now, is more about the athletes than the politics and infighting. That alone sets it apart from boxing.

The sport more or less started about 15 years ago and really gained speed when a Brazilian named Royce Gracie, an expert in jiu-jitsu, won the first Ultimate Fighting Championship in 1993. According to Gracie’s Web site, “Discipline after discipline was defeated by the 6-1, 180-pound Royce Gracie. His opponents consistently outweighed him by more than 50 pounds.”

While it’s been referred to as “human cockfighting,” it became apparent boxers didn’t necessarily beat wrestlers and judo experts didn’t beat kick boxers and on and on. The fighters who did best in MMA were proficient in multiple disciplines.

An earlier incarnation of Ultimate Fighting fizzled in the 1990s in large part because the sport was so brutal. So organizers tweaked the rules and separated fighters into weight classes.

The sport is still brutal, but there is a sense of balance and order. And, most important, ever-growing commercial appeal: Popularity of Ultimate Fighting and MMA is skyrocketing.

Spike TV, which airs UFC, kicks the you-know-what out of other sporting events—we’re talking mainstream again—in Nielsen ratings.

Some area restaurants, such as Hooters on Siegen Lane, pack fans in for big televised events.

In July, a rematch between a veteran champion and one of the up-and-comers raked in millions of dollars in pay-per-view revenue. Buffalo Wild Wings Express on Bluebonnet Boulevard drew so many customers, they had to turn people away.

At Walk-On’s, a sports-themed restaurant with a strong emphasis on LSU sports, co-owner Jack Warner says UFC is huge. People call to make sure Walk-On’s will show the fights on the TVs.

“People like that stuff,” Warner says. “It’s like the Romans and the lions.”

And they drink a lot.

Such was the case Aug. 26 at the River Center for Capital City Carnage, an event put on by pro fighter Rich Clementi of Slidell and his company, No Love Entertainment.

The event pulled in a couple thousand fans despite going heads-up against a big UCF championship televised event. Trust the beer and liquor sales in the River Center didn’t suffer. They came to cheer local boxing favorite Frankie Caruso, who won his first-ever MMA event, and to see world-champion Rich Franklin. Former Denham Springs High quarterback Kyle Bradley even had his own fan section.

The music blared, the ring announcer entered the octagon surrounded by four scantily clad hotties and, in bout and after bout, fighters scrapped with all they had. You have to be in tremendous physical condition to battle in that cage for three, five-minute rounds, if the bout goes that long.

Ricky Lachney of Baton Rouge soaked it all in as he settled into a seat that cost him $45.

“Knockouts,” Lachney said, “that’s what I’m here to see.”

Local fan Colin Percy is a project estimator for a construction company. He’s even been a judge and claims he’s the biggest MMA fan ever. “I watch everything I can. I tell you, it’s addictive,” Percy says. “It’s the action. In boxing, two guys will match up, and it’s a boring fight. A boring fight in this [sport] is a good fight.”

You can tell a lot of about a sport by its sponsors. If you think MMA and Capital City Carnage is a fringe event, think again. One of its sponsors was the U.S. Army. The Army brought out big Hummers and aired lively and loud videos on the arena’s big screens, vignettes aimed at the young men in the audience.

Just as Sterling Byrd started his apparel business around MMA, Gabe Miller and his father developed a new kind of training punching bag that keeps you on your toes. The bag moves side to side and diagonally on a moving track. The Glideboxx (www.glideboxx.com) Web site boasts it’s an “evolution in combat training.”

“It’s real unpredictable,” says Miller, who will sell you a Glideboxx unit that bolts to your ceiling for $799, or $1,200 if you need the free-standing frame.

Miller, age 26, wrestled at Catholic High and graduated from LSU. He started jiu-jitsu when he moved to Lafayette. His dad, Larry, invented the Glideboxx almost 10 years ago.

“We put a patent on it, and here you go,” Gabe Miller says.

Tony Jarreau is the owner of Gladiators Academy on Florida Boulevard. His clientele numbers more than 150, the majority of whom do not actually compete in fights. Most are there for the rigorous workout: His instructors teach boxing, Muay Thai kick boxing, jiu jitsu and MMA.

Jarreau played football at Walker High School, served as a U.S. Marine and as a Baton Rouge policeman.

“The police department teaches a lot of different types of tactics and so does the military, and I’m familiar with them both,” Jarreau says. “They’re all converting to what we’re teaching. It’s been proven, it’s what works.”

Baton Rouge Police Corporal John O’Donoghue, who played baseball at LSU from 1988-90 and spent 1993 as a pitcher with the Baltimore Orioles, swears by it. Like all other city policemen, he’s trained under national police standards. But he’s glad he includes MMA into his workouts.

“Some of the things I learned probably saved a life, either mine or a suspect,” O’Donoghue says.

One police call in particular stands out for O’Donoghue. The suspect had a knife, but O’Donoghue didn’t know it. “I couldn’t get him to put his hands on the wall,” the 6-foot-6 inch O’Donoghue recalls. “He reached to his left back pocket, and I used a take-down technique that doesn’t hurt him but immobilized him.”

O’Donoghue says he handcuffed the suspect easily. “He was reaching for a 6-inch knife in his back pocket. I have no doubt that had I not had that training, he would have stuck me in the ribs. I would have had to have shot that man. Either way, it would have been a bad outcome.”

Gladiators Academy offers a discount to law enforcement personnel. But O’Donoghue says not many of his co-workers train there.

“You really do have to check your ego at the door. If you go in there to just win, you’re going to be disappointed because these guys are very good at what they do. It’s very hard to have to tap out to a guy who weighs 100 pounds less than you.”

O’Donoghue says when he first started training, it was sobering. He worked out with local pro Dustin Johnson, who teaches MMA at Gladiators.

“I was absolutely abused for probably six months. At the time, I probably weighed 260 pounds. I quickly learned what jiu-jitsu can do. He [Johnson] weighed about 150 and had me in submission holds right and left. It was truly an eye-opening experience.”

In two years, O’Donoghue says he’s lost about 30 pounds and is proficient in jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai.

“I knew absolutely nothing. I had zero experience,” O’Donoghue says. “But once [getting beaten] happened to me, I wanted to learn what these guys know.”

That’s something the average citizen should be thrilled to hear.

“We have East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputies. We have some FBI guys in there. We have Baton Rouge city police, state troopers,” Jarreau says. “Everybody who comes in to Gladiators Academy does not have to fight. They’re there for two reasons: to get in shape or to learn this stuff. The techniques we teach are for self-defense.”

One of his teachers is highly successful pro Tim Credeur, who specializes in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, the discipline made famous in Ultimate Fighting by Gracie.

“Traditionally, in martial arts in America, we’ve been structured around the stand-up forms of fighting,” says Credeur, who lives in Lafayette but travels the world because of MMA. “Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a new martial art

based on wrestling and judo backgrounds that focus on utilizing submissions to stop your opponents in the forms of chokes, arm locks, leg locks, body locks.”

Credeur, age 29, watched on TV as Gracie won that first UFC in 1993.

“He completely shocked everybody, because we’ve always been raised in America with the Duchess of Queensbury stand-up boxing background,” Credeur says. “Seeing a smaller man grab people and use submissions to stop bigger fighters was just shocking to me. I sought those guys out.”

The product of Westminster Academy in Opelousas went to Brazil and a lot of other places to learn more. Now he’s a sales manager for Sprint by day and fighter by night.

“And a loving husband,” he says with a smile, nodding toward his wife, Mamie.

When they met eight years ago, it was hard for her to explain to her family he was a cage fighter.

“It was difficult to explain to people how I was making money and what I was doing without sounding like a complete psycho,” Credeur says. “But over the years, with the UFC events and Spike TV and mixed martial arts gyms popping up all over the world, it’s become a lot more accepted. A lot of people are excited about what I do.

“And the money’s better. That helps.”

Katie Hoffman of Baton Rouge wouldn’t have missed the Capital City Carnage for anything.

“I like the fighting. I like it a lot. My friends got me to watch the reality show, and I got hooked. Even my mom watches,” Hoffman says.

“It’s better than boxing. It is. Because it’s, like, real. It’s like street fighting as a sport. Late-night in the parking lot, but in the ring.”

Or octagon.