ESL Conversation

A:  Have you been catching any of UFC fights they’ve been showing on satellite? B:  I’ve never heard of it.  What is it? A:  It stands for Ultimate Fighting Championship.  It’s a mixed martial arts competition.  Fighters from all over the world and from all kinds of different fighting backgrounds compete.  They fight in an Octagon, which is a little bit similar to a boxing ring.  There are very few rules.  You can do almost anything to your opponent except for things like eye gouging or biting. B:  How do they judge the competition? A:  There are judges who score each fight and decide on a winner after the fight.  A lot of fights are actually stopped prematurely because one of the fighters is forced into submission.  The ref also often stops the fight if he feels one of the fighters is unable to defend himself? B:  Wouldn’t the bigger and stronger fighters win most of the time? A:  It’s surprising how talented some of the smaller fighters are.  I’ve seen fighters win against guys who outweigh them by over 100 pounds.  With that said though, size is still a factor and they divide the fighters into different weight classes. B:  It sounds pretty scary.  Those guys must be crazy. A:  Actually, most of them see it as a sport and they have a lot of respect for the other fighters.  Many of them have very good sportsmanship and are able to shake hands and hug after a grueling fight. B:  It sounds interesting.  I’ll have to check it out.  When is it on? A:  The live fights are mostly pay-per-view, but they show a lot of reruns on many of the sports channels.

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Catching: In this situation, “catching” means “seeing” or “watching”.  We might say, “Did you catch any of the basketball game on TV last night?”  We can also use catching in a situation like, “Did you catch what the teacher was talking about in class?”  This means, “Did you understand what the teacher was talking about in class”.

UFC: This stands for “Ultimate Fighting Championship”.  This is a professional type of fighting.  The athletes can use any style of fighting to try to beat their opponent.  It has very few rules and is becoming a lot more popular around the world.

Mixed martial arts: A martial art is a particular training and style of fighting.  Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Karate are two different kinds of martial arts.  In a mixed martial arts competition, fighters can use any martial arts style they choose to fight.

Octagon: It’s a shape with 8 sides.

Eye gouging: Trying to take someone’s eyes out.

Prematurely: Premature means “before it’s supposed to happen”.  If a fight ends prematurely, it means it ends before the time limit.  If you are cooking and you put the chicken into the pot prematurely, it means you put the chicken in the pot too soon.

Submission: Submission means to “give up” or “surrender”.  In these fights, if a fighter feels he is losing badly he can submit.  This lets the referee know to stop the fight.  There are certain submission moves in these fights.  Some of the fighters try to break their opponent’s arm for example.  If someone’s arm is about to break, they will likely submit.  Of course, if you submit it means you lose the fight.

Ref: This is a short form of the word “referee”.

Weight classes: They have different ranges of weight called weight classes.  Fighters only fight against people in their own weight class.  One weight class might be under 170 pounds.  Another weight class might be under 205 pounds.  The reason for weight classes is that it would be unfair to ask a 150 pound fighter to fight against a 250 pound fighter.  If a fighter is very confident in his abilities, he is allowed to fight in a higher weight class.  No one is allowed to fight in a lower weight class.

Sportsmanship: being a fair and courteous competitor.  If someone doesn’t make excuses when they lose a match but instead congratulates their opponent, they are said to be showing good sportsmanship.  If they win a match and say nice comments about their opponent, they are also showing good sportsmanship.  Good sports will smile and shake hands after the match.  They accept both victory and defeat.

Grueling: Very intense and tiring.  Running a marathon in the heat would be a very grueling thing to do.

Live: If something is shown live on TV it means it is happening in real life at the same time.  Sometimes sports are shown live.  Sometimes they are shown much later than the actual match.

Pay-per-view: This is a type of TV channel that you must pay each time you watch something.  These are common in North America but I’m not sure about the rest of the world.  Some movie channels are pay-per-view.  If you want to see the movie, you must pay something like 3 dollars to watch it.

Reruns: These are shows or events played on TV that have already been played before.  Many times the same TV show will be played over and over again.  If its not the first time its being shown on TV, it is called a “rerun”.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Fun English Lessons, fun-english-vip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.