In launching a new U.S. league, Power Slap, UFC is taking a truly indefensible position.
In the early 2000s, Esquire published a column called “The Indefensible Position.” This was a sort of proto-hot-take clearinghouse, intended sarcastically, presaging a time when every idea—no matter how implausible, counterintuitive or just flat wrong—was given a platform. Writers took turns mounting seemingly unpardonable arguments, such as “Smoking Has Its Benefits” and “Adultery Is Good for Your Marriage.”
The column debuted in 2001, the same year that a Las Vegas sports promotion called Zuffa (Italian for “fight”) paid $2 million for the rights to stage the Ultimate Fighting Championship: two men––and at the time the fighters were exclusively male––beating the bejesus out of each other while locked inside a steel octagon.