Five years ago, the organizers of a biweekly Sunday-night hip-hop open mike in Cambridge looked at their calendars and saw a roadblock toward the end of January: their schedule coincided with the Super Bowl. For about six months, they’d been putting on "All That! Hip Hop Poetry and Jazz," a showcase modeled after New York City’s groundbreaking Lyricist Lounge, which featured a then-new combination of MCs, spoken-word poets, and new-school bohemian rhapsody. But when the All That! crew decided to risk going head-to-head with football’s biggest night, they turned to an older idea: they threw an old-school battle-rhyme competition, and the annual Superbowl MC Battle was born.

"The first year at the Western Front, it was packed to the gills," recalls MetroConcepts promoter Tim Linberg, who inaugurated the event with partners O’Neal Rowe and Rocky LaMontagne. "It featured every prominent Boston MC at the time, even people who don’t battle anymore: Mr. Lif versus Reks, Akrobatik versus Sage Francis. It was really fun, and we turned away hundreds of people at the door. So it was like, ‘Oh, Jesus, we weren’t expecting that.’"

The next year, seeking more space, the Battle moved across town to the Middle East, and the event continued to sell out against the Super Bowl — until it hit another roadblock last year, in the form of the upstart Patriots shocking the world. "After that first year, [the battle] was known as the thing that happened on the Super Bowl. But last year we got burned — and when I say we got burned, we still had 400 people show up. But this year we thought, well, let’s play it safe." In fact, the organizers considered having this year’s Superbowl MC Battle — to be held next Thursday, January 23 — on Super Bowl Sunday as well, except that they had to book the room a few weeks before the Pats were eliminated, and no one was willing to bet against New England returning to the championship.

In its short history, the Superbowl MC Battle has become an underground hip-hop institution. There’s only one other major MC battle in the country — the Scribble Jam, in Ohio — and the Superbowl is the only event of its kind in the Northeast. The convention of the MC battle — in which rappers rely on their improvisational skills in a head-to-head rhyme-off resembling the age-old African-American tradition of the dozens — is nearly as old as hip-hop itself, although it usually takes place in less formal surroundings. Battling has long been a rite of passage for up-and-coming MCs, but the success this past year of Eminem’s 8 Mile may have done for battle-rhyming what Rocky did for boxing. "I thought the battle scenes [in 8 Mile] were really well done," says Linberg. "From the [view]point of someone who has seen a lot of battles and knows a lot about hip-hop, I mean, it’s not like those were freestyles. But for all intents and purposes, I thought it was clever and fairly accurate: there’s a lot of pressure, there’s a real kind of test of your manhood or womanhood, and it’s really about putting your opponent on the line and asserting yourself in a very aggressive way."

As in 8 Mile and, well, last year’s real Super Bowl, the MC Superbowl Battle tends to mirror the story of David trumping Goliath. The winners have tended to be relative unknowns. "People who are well-known MCs are at a decided disadvantage," says Linberg. Why? "There’s more readily available ammunition against them. If you’re battling someone who has a record out, you can use that as material; but if you’ve never seen this person before, you’re limited to generic battle rhymes or criticisms of his appearance or that kind of stuff. And I think there’s also real truth to the idea that the best battle rappers are kids with a chip on their shoulder with something to prove, who are out to get some respect. Sometimes the established guys don’t see the hungry kids coming. The first battle we did, Sage Francis won, and he was virtually unknown. But the second-place kid was Alias — he ended up winning outright two years later — and he’d walked in off the street. That was a real surprise: people were like, ‘Who the fuck is this kid?’"

The fifth annual Superbowl MC Battle takes place next Thursday, January 23, at the Middle East, 480 Mass Ave, in Central Square. Call (617) 864-EAST.