An important aspect of projects like this is that whatever happens, whether it turns out according to plan or not, it's all part of the story.  Things don't "go wrong" they just go differently to how we expected.

So today I had a chat with Nick and he told me that he's now got theatre work until June.  Which is fantastic! Not only that but it sounds like some really interesting theatre.  However, it does mean that things will have to work differently than we'd thought and so we'll have to see how it turns out.

Our intention had been for Nick to start training and for me to get started on collecting material properly in April or May after I get back from a trip across the USA.  I will still do this, but it'll have to be something else.  And what that something else will be will depend on where we are at that time.  All part of the story...

This was the first Pro bout on the card - over in less than a minute.  I didn't catch how old Neil was but he looks like a kid to me and he didn't seem to stand a chance. 

This is the kind of experience Nick may have.  Or maybe he'll last longer.  Maybe he'll win...

And whether he wins or loses, I wonder whether he'll ever want to do it again or if once will be enough for him.

The main reason for going to the show in Leeds was to get a feel for what the sport is really like.  i had so many preconceptions and prejudices and I've seen them in other people too when talking about this project.  Which is one reason for doing the project in the first place...

However, I did of course have a camera with me and so here's Nick giving a bit of an intro to the evening.  I got a bit too engrossed in the action after this to get really good stuff, but I'll see what else I can pull out and publish and I'll be capturing some stills from the other material too.

I had my first live MMA experience on Friday night.  I loved it.  I came away enthused about this project, but also with a weird physical feeling, a kind of need to able to use my own body like that, a feeling that I was missing out on something.

Overall, I have to say that I was really pleased to meet a great crowd of solid, ordinary men, putting on a great show and sharing a spectacle with their mates.  Nick and I spent about twice as much time on the motorway as we actually did in Leeds (Nick bearing the brunt of it because he was driving) but it was well worth it and I was still buzzing when I got home to freezing London at 3.30am.

Aaron Chatfield, the MC for the evening, told me before the show started that the fights wouldn't be what I expected, he's clearly seen plenty of eager noobs in his time.  And he was right.  I was expecting wild, uncontrolled street-fighting and what I saw was dedicated, focused athletes who, at their best, embodied the Art in Mixed Martial Arts.  It often felt like watching chess rather than a fight.  You can tell that the tactics and concentration and thinking ahead are all part of the game.

We were made very welcome by Ian and Dave Butlin, introduced to all the fighters in the changing rooms, allowed into the ring at the end to get a feel for actually being in there.  And given fantastic ring-side seats so that we experienced both the drama of each fight but also the reactions of the crowd.  This was obviously a hot ticket and the "top of the bill" fighters at the end of the card clearly inspire fierce loyalty.  We sat with fighter, Ross "shins of steel" Pettifer who was writing a review of the night and tweeting furiously.  There's clearly a big simultaneous online element to the shows.  Nick tells me that the online forums would be buzzing with interest about what was actually happening.

I also came away impressed by the investment in social capital that Nick has made: he's known and loved by these guys, they are all, without fail, ready to help, to offer help without being asked. They're already marking out potential opponents for him. They also have absolutely no doubt that he can and will do it. The don't pour scorn on him for wanting to have a go. They are immediately behind him all the way and offering anything he needs for this project - very useful indeed...

It's billed as The War of the Roses

Nick and I are going up to Leeds on Friday night for what will be my first live experience of MMA.  Well actually my first live experience of any kind of combative sport.  I haven't seen men fighting each other much at all since my teenage years in the days when New Year's Eve in Bromsgrove High Street traditionally ended with a punch-up.

I'm really looking forward to it and bloody scared at the same time. I really don't know what to expect.  We've got backstage passes and hopefully permission to film, so with a bit of luck we'll have something to share with you after the weekend.  Always assuming we don't upset somebody twice our size...  Nick tells me they are all highly disciplined professionals.  I don't think he's lying, but I'm still a bit nervous.

Take a look at the site for the event we're going to.  It's one thing seeing this on TV or on the web, but I imagine it's quite another actually being in the room, the smells, the atmosphere, the tension, the actual violence unfolding in front of you.  Yikes! (and a secret, private, woo-hoo!!!!)  But mostly... Yikes!

First read the proflle over there in the sidebar.

Good.

I'm working with Nick on documenting this process, we're going to be exploring the ideas of masculinity, aggression and violence in society that this brings up for two 45-year old middle-class mummy's boys from the Midlands.

We don't know anythiing about this journey except that Nick aims to be walking into that cage and fighting.  We're setting out now, and although we have some plans, we acknowledge thata we don't really know much for definite about the route we'll take. 

We'll be opening this journey up to people to talk about and influence through this blog.  It is our intention to create a documentary film of the entire process.

I don't know how physically involved I willl be, for example. It's a long time since I punched anyone or anything.  It's a long time since I did any regular physical exercise.  But I'm just as interested as Nick in how to be a man in Britain today and the effect that shifting social attitudes to physical aggression have on us psychologically and emotionally.