The reason we like watching fights is nigh entirely biological. Throughout our evolutionary history, we developed various modules aimed at the identifying and assessing of environmental cues. As a species, we ought to know who is and who is not an immediate threat/dominant individual. Couple these together and you get to the notion that humans developed various techniques to assess the relative fighting capacity/dominance of conspecifics. From there, we simply need to ask ourselves who - more often than not - would partake in these physical confrontations (thus allowing us to make relativity-based judgements/gain ground in the environment)? Men, of course. You can see where this is going, I am sure. (It is worth noting that this argument also explains the lack of excitement for the smaller, male weight classes; weight classes that - without question - contain the most skilled MMA combatants in the sport yet receive little to no respect/admiration.)
Spoken like a representative of the evolutionary perspective of psychology.
The problem with this sort of argument, as indeed is often the case with the evolutionary perspective, is the circular reasoning.
1: We prefer to watch men fight.
2: Probably because evolution.
3: How do we know that? Because...
4: We prefer to watch men fight.
Of course the appetite for violence is a result of our genes. But clearly, culture is an important element if you can find any proof of differences between cultures. If it's just a random selection of violent and non-violent people in all cultures, then it's probably based on genetics, because there's no correlation between specific cultures and their affinity for violence. But that's not the case at all. Different cultures have, and have long had, entirely different views on combat.
For some people, the very notion of men grappling is disgusting and entirely unnatural. For the greeks, wrestling naked was considered beautiful and entirely natural. And what about past and present nations who have allowed or disallowed women from joining their armed forces?
I could easily counter by saying that many men are drawn to women who can fight because we are attracted to strong females who can defend their offspring. We are particularly drawn to beautiful women who can fight, because those are potential mates. And while no one likes to watch a woman get beaten by a man, I'm sure you can find plenty of examples of fictional female characters who slaughter countless men while looking really rather sexy doing it. Incidentally, this natural attraction to strong women could explain the recent western trend where it's popular for women to be strong and fit rather than anorectic with fake boobs. Women with visible abs have never been more popular.
But then again, maybe culture plays a large part in that as well.
