Tough Guys
Tough Guys
Executive Produced by Academy Award nominee Morgan Spurlock and Academy Award winner Ross Kauffman, this documentary chronicles the origins of MMA beginning in Pittsburgh in 1979 when Bill Viola and Frank Caliguri dreamed up a contest pitting barroom bigmouths against wrestlers, martial artists, boxers, bouncers, and brawlers. Billed as a no-holds-barred new type of competitive fighting, these matches came to be known as “tough man,” “tough guy,” “battle of the brawlers,” or “battle of the superfighters”. The film explores the moment when the national martial arts craze was building to a crescendo as the economies of Pennsylvania steel towns were plummeting to record levels of unemployment.