Cable’s No-Rules ‘Fighting’ Event a Hit--and a Target : Television: The pay-per-view audience increases dramatically for ‘Ultimate Fighting Championship’ as others criticize violence on TV.

It’s being touted as “the most brutal martial arts competition there is,” and it’s coming straight at you at 6 tonight, live from Charlotte, N.C., on pay per view, with a taped replay at 8 p.m.

It’s the “Ultimate Fighting Championship V,” whose announcers boast that it has “no rules, no time limits and no way out.”

Rather than the traditional ropes, the ring is surrounded by a five-foot wire-mesh fence, caging the fighters like animals. Repeated punches to the groin, kicks to the face and prolonged chokeholds all take place in full view of the audience--and are “legal.”

There are other differences between this and traditional fights. Instead of a series of three-minute rounds, the two fighters brawl uninterrupted until one gives up or is unable to continue. The winner moves on to another match, with $64,000 going to the last of the original eight men standing. The referee steps in only to prevent eye gouging or biting.

Tanya Andreassen, event programming supervisor for the New York-based Viewers’ Choice network, which feeds the fights to local cable affiliates, says “The Ultimate Fighting Championship” “has become one of our best events.”

Two years ago, she said, “Championship I” grossed $1.2 million, with the cable affiliates getting half and the producer and network splitting the other half. Last December’s “Championship IV” nearly tripled revenues, to $3.4 million. It costs $19.95 to order.

“It’s getting to the point where it’s becoming a real sporting event. These are big numbers,” Andreassen said.

In fact, especially after the producer’s take from the arena gate and souvenir sales are factored in, the events have been quite profitable for fight producer Robert Meyrowitz, who looked right at home recently at Beverly Hills’ pricey Peninsula Hotel, where he took calls from the breakfast table while touting the success of his venture.

Meyrowitz quickly noted that his principal business is producing televised concerts for such stars as Bette Midler, the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen. He devised the “Ultimate Fighting Championship,” he said, principally to generate more business for his TV production company, New York-based Semaphore Entertainment Group.

And although critics have decried the “Ultimate Fighting Championship” for its glorification of violence in the name of entertainment, he says he has no qualms about the enterprise.

“Some people love seeing the art of the fight. And yes, some people go to see the violence,” Meyrowitz said.

“Violence has always had a certain appeal,” he continued. “When they show highlight film from a football game, what do they show? They show people being hit. When they show highlights from boxing, what do they show? They show people being knocked out. Some people go to the races to see how fast the cars will go; others go to see the crash.”

To help lend the fights legitimacy, Meyrowitz signed on former football Hall of Famer Jim Brown and former Olympic wrestling gold medalist Jeff Blatnick as commentators.

Brown, in a telephone interview, said he is not comfortable with everything that goes on in the ring but defended the lack of rules as a means of rendering the fights “more real, with less interference from referees and outside forces. . . . And it comes to a much clearer and more concise conclusion (than professional boxing).”

He added: “I don’t think there should be wars. I don’t think there should be fights. We should have a society in which we don’t have to deal with any aggressiveness at all. . . . But we’re living in an imperfect society. . . . With gang-bangers and drive-by shootings around, the least of our problems is the ‘Ultimate Fighting Championship.’ ”

But two local university professors say there is a connection between violence on television and violence in real life.

“Television has become bread and circuses,” said Tracy Westen, a communications attorney and adjunct professor at USC. “We’re living in an age in which we’re electronically witnessing the throwing of the Christians to the lions. And we’re seeing the results in the way we act around one another.”

Neil Malamuth, chairman of the communication studies department at UCLA, said that watching acts of violence once served a social purpose. During prehistoric days, “if you saw something violent, you had to pay attention for your own safety. Your survival was at stake,” he said.

Television, however, has changed that. The real danger is gone, while the primal fascination remains. And so, the effect is different. Watching violence provides the viewer a cathartic relief but also boosts the threshold of violence he can tolerate before reacting, he said.

“The fact that the mass media will use violence to get people’s attention is not surprising. The problem is that limits keep being pushed further back,” Malamuth said.

“We’ve got to ask ourselves, are we comfortable with where we’re going as a species? Is this the kind of civilization we want?”