FIGHT GIRLS is Oxygen's reality show about 10 women competing for the chance to take on the best female Muay Thai fighters in the world. The contenders have a wide variety of backgrounds, from an aspiring psychic to a Hooters waitress with a black belt in karate. They're aided in their training by a world-renowned Muay Thai sensei and a pair of female mentors: mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano and Muay Thai fighter Lisa King.

You'd think that squeezing a group of well-formed women who love to fight into the same living space would be a recipe for Jerry Springer-style brawls. But it's exactly the opposite in Fight Girls. The most compelling aspect of Fight Girls isn't really the fighting itself, although that does prove pretty riveting. It's the fact that so much of the typical reality show hoo-hah -- the casual sex, the catfights, the serial binge drinking -- is noticeably absent. Instead, the focus seems to be on the individual journeys of 10 remarkably complex and downright interesting women who support each other more often than they attack each other. Well, outside the ring, anyway.

If you take away the estrogen, Fight Girls is a lot like Spike TV's Ultimate Fighter, which follows the experiences of 16 male martial artists living under the same roof. But no serious study of fighting would be complete without the now-classic Fight Club (for mature teens and adults, anyway) ... just remember not to talk about it afterward.