Philly fighters weigh in on 'Never Back Down'

Mixed martial arts meets the movie box office.

The introduction to one of America's fastest-growing sports comes today by way of Never Back Down, the big-budget film starring Djimon Hounsou.

Kung-fu arts and ninjitsu were the traditional way that movies explored the martial arts. The Chinese term kung fu has been defined literally as energy time. Mixed martial artists use this principle to become complete striking and submissions grappling experts.

Will real MMA fighters appreciate the way their sport has been translated into cinema? I took five Philly-based fighters to see.

Like the sport, the movie was promoted via TV and a viral Web campaign. Before the film, I asked the fighters what they thought of the promotions. Their responses varied from skepticism to apathy. And afterward?

"I actually liked it, I thought the jujitsu scenes were going to be a lot cornier, but they kept it more realistic," said Josh Vogel, 25, a Brazilian or Gracie jujitsu blue belt and popular YouTube personality whose cauliflowered ears and shiner are a badge of his lifestyle. "I thought they were going to pull flying armbars and aerial attacks all over the place, but the training was realistic."

"Basically it was Brazilian jujitsu and Muy Thai [Thai boxing] thing - you see that capoeira dude get dropped after all that flipping and stuff?" said Ricardo Migliarese, 29, a champion Gracie Jiujitsu black belt, with an animated punch in the air. He didn't mean any disrespect to capoeira as an art form - it just isn't effective within mixed martial arts.

Heather Rees, 29, a submissions-grappling blue belt, said, "I liked it. I mean I thought the romance would be even cheesier but it was OK. . . . But it was the training scenes, I mean, they look real. That was done right."

Martial art movies have developed since the '80s when we would sneak off from the elementary school yard to my best friend's house at lunch to watch videotapes of the renegade shaolin monks looking for revenge on Black Belt Theater. We would argue over who was going to play Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris in fight scenes of Enter the Dragon.

The 1980s produced martial-arts cinema like The Karate Kid sequels and The Last Dragon (Sho Nuff!). We would take old mattresses and flip in the air, kicking and swiping and making whip-like sound effects - with poor voice-over dubbing ("I will avenge my masssster, heh heh my secret tiger monkey, kung fu will teach you a lesson!").

Martial-arts lovers have since traded those mattresses for grappling mats. And the sound we look for now is the snore of someone asleep from a blood choke, or maybe the tap-out signaling defeat.

Never Back Down will be followed this year by Redbelt, the story of an MMA instructor forced to fight (written and directed by David Mamet), and Never Submit, about sport judo. BET is jumping on the bandwagon with Iron Ring, a new reality-fighting TV series, much like the format of The Ultimate Fighter show.

Never Back Down didn't try to add gore for theatrical impact - everyone lived to fight another day.

To watch a video by Inquirer photographer Ron Tarver with local martial arts fighters, go to http://go.philly.com/mmaEndText