Your world confuses and frightens me

All over my Internets tonight, nothing but Human Cock Fighting. And heavy on the cock, really.

I get that people like to see people beat the crap out of each other; hence the big "Woo!" noises when a safety lays out a receiver, independent of the outcome of the play. I'm not above watching a good boxing match myself, especially if the fighters either have some personal venom in it, or there's some historical merit to the proceedings: Ali-Frazier fascinates me on a near Trickster Mythos level.

But really, are we all so immune to the charms of The Association (or non-March college basketball) that we're rather watch two guys in shorts wrap their legs around each other's necks until one of them says Hello, Sailor?

Tonight in hoop, there were two double-overtime classics, with the Spurs outlasting the very game Grizzlies and the Rockets taking out the Jazz. The Grizz took the elder statesmen of the league to the limit at home, with rookie OJ Mayo looking like the game's next great player; only a very hot Tony Parker could save them. The Rockets rode Ron Artest (!) to 28 points to win despite missing Tracy McGrady; the Jazz are missing Carlos Boozer, Mehmet Okur and Ronnie Milsap.

This, from a league with perhaps the biggest talent base of any sport outside of soccer, and the only thing I've done in the last two paragraphs is make 70% of the readers bent that I'm talking hoop again.

But anyway, back to the human cockfightery.

There's something going on here, and it's not just the Nature Abhors A Vacuum moment of boxing opening the door wide for a competing thrill. It's that, with the utter abandonment of the playing field by pro wrestling for safe bloodsport thrills, and the increasing pussification of the NFL (don't hit the quarterback in 40% of his body, don't pull the ball carrier down from behind by grabbing inside the shoulder pads from behind, don't hit the ball carrier out of bounds even if it's damn near impossible to pull up on the off chance that he cuts it back inside)...

Plus, with the Web's always-on and always-available fountain of video goodness that used to make us feel bad, until seeing so very much of it made us all lose whatever shame we still had around...

Well, maybe I'm just old school for not being more into Human Cockfighting. But, um, still. This is, really, what you want to watch?