CONTINUED SPOILAGE. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE.
It's all right. You have your point of view, and I can see where you're coming from. The way I see it, however, is not that it was a huge conspiracy to steal the man's idea, but it just turned into that through the evolving circumstances. I'm not sure about the legality of handicapping fights. Is it really against the law to have weighted competitions?
I thought the differentiation between competitive fighting and real fighting worked, and I don't see the ending as a rip-off. It was a real fight at the end, and it wasn't to win money, fame, or to prove anything, but to uphold an ideal.
As for magicians, they do exist. Of course it's not real magic. I suppose it's a stretch to think they have uses outside of bunny pulling? Maybe there's a better way it could have been done, but I didn't mind its integration.
And yeah, maybe the reason I could go along with the story is because I don't have a real love for MMA, or sports in general. Playing sports is fine, but let's be honest, professionally it's always going to be about the money. I have no problem with that, as I'm the biggest consumer of entertainment I know, but let's not take it too seriously. It's recreation designed to drain wallets. Again, I think the contrast between competition and real fighting/self-defense that the movie highlights is a sound one.
