"Well, shit."

It was about midnight on Saturday, and Miguel Torres, one of my favorite fighters, was bleeding profusely and pretty much getting his ass kicked at WEC 47. A few moments later, Joseph Benavidez locked up a guillotine, Torres tapped, and, just like that, my night was ruined.

"That was incredible," said my friend, whom I've been trying to get enthusiastic about MMA. "That elbow was sick! Did you see all that blood?"

I did, indeed, see all that blood, but disagreed with the "sickness" of that elbow. I should have been ecstatic that I (with a little help from Benavidez) earned the sport I love a new fan, but I was just surly because "my guy" lost.

Wait, "my guy?" When did that happen?

I've always held other sports fans in contempt. The mindset it takes to paint one's face and get into fistfights with fans of opposing teams has always eluded me. I see those people and think, "Great, your personalities play 162 games a year." But now it seems that I've become one of those idiots.

I've allowed Torres to proxy for me - he's very good at something I've always admired but don't have the skills or the guts for - and I've decided to invest in his success. And that is the allure of sports fandom: our culture reveres its athletes and calls them heroes, and they don't have to do anything odious like die for their convictions. In an MMA fan's case, they only have to climb into a cage and beat another person into submission.

All sports are struggles for dominance, but MMA is the least artificial. You'll never see a pride of lions break out in an impromptu baseball game, but two males teeing off on each other with those catcher's mitt-sized paws and claws might make you think Don Frye vs. Yoshihiro Takayama.

We all want to be winners and heroes, but most of us can't; we're too busy with our jobs, our families, our mundane lives. So we pick people who can - whether they're our fathers' chosen team, or we like the color of their jerseys or their badass mullets - and live vicariously through them. In my case, I've always sucked at team sports, what with the running about and getting in the way and the ridiculous, arcane rules. So I wrestled, and sucked at that too, but found it fun, and first dreamed of winning gold at the Olympics until I discovered MMA. Then I wanted to be one of those savages.

But I can't. I'm a wimp and I don't want to get punched for a living. I just want the glory. So I pick a fighter who maybe looks like me, with a similar height, build and complexion, whose style I like to watch and whom I admire for having the balls to sit in a barber chair and say, "Gimme the mullet; and when he comes up short, I feel like I have, too.

So tell me, reader: am I douchebag that needs to stop living through other people, or am I simply a fan, just like you?