Hot off the success of International Speedway Corporation (ISC) including mixed martial arts fights during Friday Night’s rain delay of the Daytona Xfinity Series race, Speedway Motorsports Incorporated (SMI) chairman Bruton Smith has announced the premiere of a brand-new Bum Fights Series this upcoming weekend at Kentucky Speedway.
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| "Fifty years from now you'll remember where you were when the one guy beat up that other guy during the rain delay" |
“I invented fighting in stock car racing”, Smith said from his Concord, North Carolina offices this morning. “Hell—when that fight happened in the 1979 Daytona 500, I was the one who told the Allison Brothers to do it—drew plenty more fans to my tracks that year! But the time has come to bring a new style of fighting to racing fans—bum fights.”
So-called “Bum Fights” feature homeless and/or transient men fighting for small sums of money. The controversial series enjoyed brief popularity in the early-00’s before lying mostly-dormant until the recent surge in interest in fight-based sports.
Smith went on to explain that, “Ultimate Fighting Championship has the Octagon. That organization Nascar had at Daytona had the Decagon. That’s why Bum Fight Series will have the Dodecagon—12 sides of hard-hitting, barely-legal action in a cage. And it won’t just be any cage, but Bruton’s Original Mecha-Cage—metal soaked in ZMax and lit on fire!”
Next weekend’s fights, expected to take place during the pre-race when Michael Waltrip would usually desperately search out people to talk to him on-air, are still being signed up, although Smith stated that they were close to agreeing to terms with both “The Hitman Hobo” and “Big JoJo Bindles”.
“SMI continues to be the leader in stock car racing promotion”, Smith said, “from introducing spectacular pre-race shows to introducing the idea of in-race breaks. Although to be fair, I wouldn’t have called them ‘stages’, I’d have called them ‘Bruton Bonus Breaks’”.
Smaller race track owner Pocono Raceway is said to be scurrying to introduce its own combat-sports style pre-race festivities, while Dover International Raceway is working to co-promote a local CZW “Barbed-Wire Florescent Tube Delaware Death Match” for its fall race.