Please Help, Should I Start Watching UFC?

Brock Lesnar in his first MMA fight

An article on Yahoo! caught my eye tonight, the results of UFC 81 featuring ex-WWF (WWE my ass, it will always be the WWF at The Legend) star Brock Lesnar on the undercard. Turns out that Lesnar got taken out in a minute and thirty seconds by Frank Mir, but not before pounding the crap out of Mir a little bit.

Is this something I need to follow? Is the UFC/MMA world a thing that your Average Joe baseball, football, basketball and hockey fan would enjoy? I like boxing. I'll admit that I loved the WWF when I was a rug-rat in the 80's (hell, I'll even admit that I watched my fair share of Monday Night Raw when I was in college). Are those credentials good enough?

I've heard good things about watching UFC pay-per-views from multiple sources. I see that there are tons of blogs devoted to the mixed martial arts arena (some of them both MMA and boxing oriented): MMAjunkie.com, UFCDailey.com, MMA TKO, Brawl and Maul, Bloody Elbow, Keep Punching, Five Ounces of Pain, The Takedown, and many others with similarly awesome names. It seems like a lot of people think it's pretty damn cool.

I'm down with a little violence as entertainment. Is this more than Joe Sports fan can handle, or is this right up Joe Sports fan's alley? Can I get some help here, Legend faithful? Is it time that I start ponying up for some PPV's? Please advise.


--ES