There is a moment in pretty much every bout of mixed martial arts—or MMA, as it is now popularly known—where the spectator will see roughly the following: a lean, mid-20s male, muscular and tattooed, astride the chest of a similar mid-20s male, pounding his fists downward into his opponent's face. This moment doesn't always signal the end of the fight. MMA is known for slippery manoeuvres that turn the fight improbably upside down: knee bars and chokeholds that are applied in a sudden unfurling of limbs, a slithering of bodies that invert the expectations, like some huge, sweating piece of origami unfolding to reveal an object you could not possibly have predicted.
Still, unless you're a very devout MMA fan, you'll be hard-pressed not to feel, in that first moment—as the fists descend, the nasal blood mists, spackling the canvas, and the supine opponent's hands flutter to defend his eyes—that Western civilization itself teeters on the brink of oblivion, perhaps never to awaken again.
Welcome to the Barceló Playa Tambor in Costa Rica. I'm ringside with Calvin Ayre, the Saskatchewan-born online gambling tycoon perhaps best known for being the cover boy of Forbes's Billionaire issue in March, 2006. Ayre, whose net worth at that time was estimated at slightly over $1 billion (U.S.), is the founder and CEO of Bodog Entertainment, one of the highest-profile and most controversial players in the online gambling industry. We're here watching the filming of the third and fourth seasons of BodogFight's "MMA lifestyle show," as Ayre calls it, now carried to 93 million households twice-weekly by Ion Television, the U.S. broadcast group. BodogFight, one of the entertainment divisions of Bodog.com and a key component of the company's branding strategy, is also one of the CEO's favourite projects—he happens to be a hard-core MMA fan. "It's simply the best fight product out there," he says. "And we felt Bodog's flamboyant marketing muscle could really broaden the sport's fan base."
Flamboyant is the key word here. Vegas at the dangerous tail end of a steroid binge comes to mind. In the baking sun at Tambor Beach, there are a couple hundred participants—fighters, trainers, hangers-on—sitting on the crates that make up the bleachers of this Survivor-styled set, flexing in their Bloodline- and Pimp Hammer-brand MMA leisure wear. There are Bodog-hired girls salted throughout the crowd in their Brazilian-cut bikinis, their push-ups and their teddies. There are reportedly nine cameras at work on the set from BodogFight alone. And the outside press—from Canada and elsewhere—has been shuttling in and out all week, making this perhaps the only entertainment production in the world that starts the hard junketing on the first day of principal photography.
And then there is Ayre himself, posed at the epicentre of this action. Single, in his mid-40s, getting a gut. He's wearing a short-sleeved tropical shirt. He has a drink on the go, working against what would appear to be a pretty decent hangover. ("Some of his party buddies were in yesterday," his PR handler confides.) He sits on a raised bleacher between a pretty young woman described to me as his "date" and a hard-eyed model in a red bustier.
I've just had one of those MMA moments that for all but the aficionado will induce a kind of existential despair: the experience of watching someone be punched unconscious as they lie on their back. Ayre has made his way ringside to congratulate the winning fighter, one of only a few sponsored by Bodog, while in the background, play-by-play commentator Bob Sheridan lays it on perhaps a bit thick as he intones: Calvin doesn't miss a fight. He loves them. What he might not know is that the fighters love him as much as he loves them.
What does Bodog like about this particular fighter, I ask Ayre as he returns to his crate, reseating himself between the girls in the shade of crossed palm fronds. I am expecting some enlightenment on the topic of strikers versus grapplers, or the fine art of the takedown. But Ayre answers by turning to his favourite topic of all—one he'll return to often in the conversations we'll have over the next day and a half.
"I like him because he's a brand ambassador for us," Ayre says, squinting up through cracking TV makeup. "He's everything Bodog stands for as a brand. Living life to the fullest. Me against him, right? The primeval challenge. Those are our brand values."
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