Recently UFC featherweight contender Urijah Fabe produced a video promoting something called “full contact skydiving.” This sport involved two men punching, kicking, and otherwise trying to do one another harm while falling from a great height. There was also a referee involved to enforce the rules, which included no interference with equipment (i.e. the parachute) and to stop the fight and open the chute when it was time. There were shots of competitors training in one of those chambers that levitate people with blasts of compressed air.
At first glance full contact skydiving seemed to be the stupidest and yet most exciting “sport” ever devised by sensation craving, risk embracing young men. Jumping out of a perfectly good air plane and falling through the air would seem to most people to be exciting enough. Trying to inflict harm on one another while doing so would seem to be pushing the envelope. Despite the exploits of many stunt men in action films, fighting while falling seems to be a quick prescription for an early death when that sudden stop on the ground occurs.
As it turns out, “full contact skydiving” and the video that advertised it was a hoax perpetrated by Fabe and some friends to publicize Amp energy drink, which is the sponsor of the pro fighter. Faber, whose profession involves beating up other men, does not do so while skydiving. Indeed he has never skydived at all.
Just because the sport was fake designed to advertise a product, one suspects that there are a lot of people, having seen the video, who will want to try it for real, at considerable risk to life and limb.
