There’s a familiar feeling I get watching Rio Heroes, and it’s not a good one.  It’s like being forced to watch video footage of yourself when you were thirteen.  The person you see is vaguely recognizable, and a part of you wants to keep watching to see if something good happens, but mostly you’re just embarrassed.

Well, for one thing, the production quality is terrible.  Rio Heroes’ fights looked like they were filmed in a half-empty warehouse.  They don’t even have a full cage, just three sides of a chain-link fence pushed up against a wall.  The “referee” is former fighter Jorge Pereira, who is reportedly the brains behind this operation.  He does very little actual officiating, unless you count shouting at the fighters just inches from their exhausted faces.

In other words, the move from Vale Tudo to modern MMA was a natural evolution.  So why is Rio Heroes trying to uninvent the wheel?

Early UFC’s were successful in America because they sold people on the idea of authenticity.  It wasn’t boxing or wrestling – it was a “real” fight.  But we learned in a hurry that real fights weren’t always interesting fights.  When Ken Shamrock laid in Royce Gracie’s guard for thirty minutes, that was real.  It was also painfully boring.

Rio Heroes seems to think that there is a relationship between the lack of rules and how interesting a fight is to watch.  By interesting, I really mean brutal and bloody.  But is there anyone out there who really feels that MMA is not rough enough as it is?  Guys are getting punched, kicked, kneed, elbowed, slammed, choked, and armbarred.  Most fights don’t go the distance, and about a third of them end with someone hovering near unconsciousness.

If anything, the lack of rules makes the fighters more conservative.  Punching without gloves means a greater chance of breaking your hand, which means fewer overall punches.  Plus, Rio Heroes is not necessarily more authentic as a fight, since the referee regularly brings fighters back to their feet to force them to slug it out.

Rio Heroes is putting their hope into a cheap trick of marketing.  They’re betting that they can make sell an inferior product by using a gimmick.  It just happens that their gimmick is one we left behind over a decade ago, and I doubt there are many people who are eager to go back.

Read more of Ben Fowlkes work at The Fighting Life.