The sound your face makes when I slam my foot into it

In 2008, local World Extreme Cagefighting fighter Urijah Faber lost his featherweight title to Mike Brown. The next year, Faber broke his right hand and dislocated his left in the process of showering Brown’s skull with blows, but ended up losing his rematch in front of a disappointed hometown Arco Arena crowd.

But now this Sunday, Faber gets to redeem himself with another Arco fight, this time against Rafael Assuncao, who’s won his last six battles; their fight is the the No. 2 bout on the WEC 46: Varner vs. Henderson card.

I didn’t attend Faber’s fight last June, but I did hit up the Tito Ortiz-Rashad Evans Ultimate Fighting Championship card in July 2007, which for this pacifist, liberal, French-speaking journalist was truly an eye-opener; I won’t soon forget that at once compelling and cringe-inducing glockenspiel-like thunk when Anderson Silva bomped Nate Marquardt in the noggin with his foot, letting blood fly across the octagon—which silenced the otherwise roaring Arco crowd of 15,000. NBA refs blow whistles like 5-year-olds do candles, and it’s made basketball soft. Mixed martial arts, man—now that’s sports, hard up.