Old Man Looking for a Fight

A Loughton, England man has designs on becoming the oldest to enter a cage fight, according to a slice-of-life story at the Guardian’s Web site. Alan Mortlock plans on competing at the age of 55 in Brentwood, in part because he believes he’ll be setting some kind of record. He won’t be: Skip Hall was 61 when he had a fight several years ago in the U.S. And God knows what’s taken place in some of Iowa’s less populated barns.

Both Hall and Mortlock invite debate over where the line should be drawn between personal responsibility and social liability. Mortlock says he’ll be fighting a 27-year-old. That sounds unwise. Then again, I’m not Mortlock and don’t have to suffer a broken sternum. Society seems to take issue only with activities that expedite possible harm to people. If you want to slowly bury yourself with cheeseburgers and cigarettes, you can. But packing all that risk into a single 15-minute fight? Unacceptable.

Mortlock sounds like his mid-life crisis is going to involve a wired jaw. In this instance, a man’s ill-advised hobby might be detrimental to the hobby itself -- if he happened to be injured, MMA takes responsibility as some kind of mass offender. Whatever happened to skydiving?