The sounds of impact are so intense that you’ll wince in pain for the fighters! In some cases you’ll turn away. The first match resembled a violent car wreck. 10 absolutely brutal encounters.

Is that Art Davie circa 1995, gleefully providing ad copy for a cassette cover? Nope. That’s Jeff Osborne (Pictures) channeling the Marquis de Sade to trumpet his newest DVD release, a repurposed HooknShoot gym tournament titled “Bare Knuckle Beatdown Volume #1.”

For those of you curious to see what happens when a “skinhead-turned-Minister” locks horns with a “real estate agent,” as Osborne promises to deliver … boy, does he have a deal for you.

Need your desensitization in regular intervals? There’s always TJ Thompson’s Super Brawl video subscription. His TV spots — from the folks who brought you “Girls Gone Wild” — punctuate every strike with cartoon sound effects, every submission with what sounds like a celery stick snapping in half.

As de Sade might say: What hath Kimbo wrought?

The very sort of carnival barker copy that got this industry blacklisted in the 1990s is coming back in a big way, and it’s not limited to independent promoters like Osborne and Thompson.

When media gab shows like The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch come calling for B-reel footage, Zuffa is all too happy to oblige with their most grotesque lowlights: Hughes pinning Newton’s arms down and beating his face in; men getting pummeled on the mat, defenseless. Spike’s TV spots for their UFC content promise bloody melees. The InYaFace sensibility has returned, apparently none the worse for the wear.

“I thought Art Davie was full of complete (crap) when he said the worst thing that can happen is the UFC becoming a sport,” Osborne relates.

Now he’s not so sure.

"About three years ago, I quit reading and catering to MMA forums and fans with both my DVDs and live events," he said. "Now, I sell more DVDs than ever before and our shows have had three consecutive sellouts without any coverage from MMA media. If someone wants to disagree with the way I market anything, so be it."

No longer image-conscious, Osborne has taken this tact in the face of even more significant government morality movements than what got the sport nearly rubbed out in the last century.

There’s ominous talk of the cable television industry falling under FCC regulation, despite the fact that we pay for the content; Janet Jackson’s boob had some onlookers catatonic, but for all the wrong reasons; blithely idiotic bits from Howard Stern’s radio show that he performed in 1995 can’t be replayed 10 years later because of “objectionable content.” The religious right has us barreling toward Pleasantville, USA, and assuming the safe existence of a violent fringe sport seems ridiculously optimistic.

To hear Dana White tell it, NSAC sanctioning has provided all the safety net they need to promote their business how they see fit. When asked last spring how he imagined healing a PR black eye over the signing of Sean Gannon, White stated that he had no concerns, that since sanctioning was in place, there was nothing anyone could do.

Perhaps true, perhaps not. While the NSAC and the Fertittas wield a degree of influence in Las Vegas, no entity exists that’s beyond the government’s reach. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) has talked extensively about setting up a federal commission to oversee boxing. Does anyone have any doubt what bastard child of brawling McCain would choose to exploit if this pursuit ever becomes a reality?

Image is everything in any business, and MMA’s new fetish to rely on the kind of superficial stereotypes that once caused a firestorm of controversy is ominously shortsighted. You’ll attract the mouth-breathers for a time, but do they actually have the interest or patience to become returning customers?

Osborne thinks the problem is reversed. “In the last four years, our vastly shrinking audience of hardcore fans has dropped from about 40,000 to about 3,000 people who steadily follow the sport,” he reasons. “TJ Thompson took major criticism from the industry when he re-released his Super Brawl DVDs through mainstream and direct marketing ads. I'm sure he can tell you it was the best investment of his life. Once things started rolling, he truly didn't care what anyone thought.”

It’s hard to imagine that those same thoughts didn’t surround SEG’s production offices when the UFC was pulling in a quarter-million buy rate. Before the roof caved in.

Zuffa’s UFC seems to perceive Nevada as the last lap toward acceptance, that their blessing is some kind of gold standard that negates page after page of negative copy and gives them an impenetrable flak jacket against … well, flak. And smaller promotions seem to agree, as evidenced by the damning text on Osborne’s online store.

No one seems particularly concerned that this could once again blow up in everyone’s face, despite the fact that very recent history has proved otherwise. The almighty dollar has seduced a fresh crop of promoters, impatient with the selling of the sport as a technical contest between professional athletes.

Hypocritically, the industry becomes peeved when the mainstream media gets it “wrong.” Florida columnist Ray McNulty was the most recent recipient of fan wrath when he erroneously reported that UFC contestants weren’t allowed to quit. It was a factual misstep awash in an article that took umbrage to the sport’s very existence.

What is McNulty supposed to think? His exposure to the sport involved him staring at two men imprisoned in a fence, with the hapless Sean Gannon being bludgeoned into a bloody heap in the middle of the canvas. If he chose to research the sport further, he’d be likely to run across some of this relentless hyperbole. It’s Thunderdome, Vegas-style.

For every Nevada that’s given its blessing, there’s a New York that practically dry heaves at the thought of welcoming this type of competition into its territory. For every Max Kellerman who champions the sport, there’s an MSNBC burial airing in regular rotation. We as an industry are still on precipitously thin ice: a kind of cultural probation. There are undoubtedly people waiting for us to fail as a viable entity.

And the solution is to summon the ghosts of SEG’s past?

I’ll accept the Chicken Little label. Eventually, this kind of meathead hype is going to attract the wrong kind of attention … again. This sport’s identity crisis is going to prompt a vicious recoil … again. Are these guys talented pros or backyard brawlers? Are we supporting elite-level competition or primal thrills straight out of Rome? We can’t have it both ways.

Even if, in fairness to Osborne, I am interested in seeing a real estate agent get his ass kicked.

The opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com