a half-dozen different designs."

Harrison thought of a raised platform accentuated by barbed wire and foam rocks, a roped ring surrounded by fencing, and a circular track where fighters could apparently tumble out of bounds and risk a broken neck. None of them appeared to stir SEG's interest.

"The last one I came up with was an eight-sided ring," Harrison said. "It had a chain-link fence around the sides, but only chest high, and padded rails that we had manufactured. It also had an outer platform that went around the outside for the camera operators."

Harrison showed Pillot his sketches, and Pillot picked out the octagon-shaped cage. Or, to hear Pillot tell it, he was the one to suggest the shape. "I said, 'We need an octagon,'" Pillot recalled. "That happenedboxing ring."

However the eight-sided design had been struck, it met SEG's approval. Harrison went through a few iterations with Pillot -- an octagonal surface surrounded by a cage and ropes and another with a raised platform. Flexible netting gave way to fencing; a surface 40 feet in diameter gave way to 30.

When the design was finalized, it was passed it along to Cusson, who had fabricated many of Harrison's set designs for music videos. He accomplished construction in under two weeks using a mixture of two-by-four wooden planks for structural support, three-quarters inch plywood for the surface, vinyl chain-link fencing for containment and two inches of carpet padding that would later be a source of frustration for strikers looking to find their footing.

"We had a big build space