This past weekend the MMA fighters went to Richmond, Virginia to showcase their skills in the CSC 26 Mixed Martial Arts show. The name of the show was Full Throttle which was a fitting name when you think about what happened in the fights. Instructor Orlando is doing a write-up on all the fights that will be sent out on the newsletter but I will give you my views and some behind-the-scene stories.
The first fight of the night for Team Evolve was Israel Flores. Israel had trained a full 2 weeks for this fight. As you already know I would never put any fighter in the cage with just 2 weeks of training but Israel gave me a story about how many times he has missed the window of opportunity to fight. Work always seems to stop him form being able to commit to the training needed. Israel proceeded to tell me how much he had been conditioning on his own and that he had been training in every class he could so he felt his skills were sharp! I told him that I would throw him in the Gauntlet and see how he did. As you already know he did really well.
The fight was awesome and if you missed it I will have it posted on www.evolveacademy.com by the end of this week. You should watch it because if you looked up the definition of tough this fight should be linked to it :). If you have ever listened to his life story it would make you appreciate your life and how easy you have had it. I don’t care if you were raised in a lower, middle, upper, broken, abusive inner city, drug, alcohol etc. family or what the rest of your life story is it will sound like a great life in comparison to Israel’s. There are positive things that come from his type of difficult upbringing and life and he displayed the positive things Sat. night. The word quit is not in his vocabulary and I believe it is because he has had such a rough life that he is so tough!
The 2nd fight was Jay Mo. He came to the school a year ago at 215 lbs and fought at 145 Sat. night. If you watched his past fights (which are also posted on www.evolveacademy.com) you know that he likes to put on an exciting show. I was on the fence about if I should let him fight because I heard his opponent had weighed in a little over 135 and had been training in his garage. Not sure why they would put this guy in the show but I have seen some tough backyard garage fighters so I really did not want to underestimate him. That was until I saw him warming up in the parking lot. Anyone using a Kata to warm up is either 1. trying to throw me a curve ball or 2. really has no idea what he is about to get into. It was the 2nd -- he had no idea what he got into.
When I saw him warming up with a Kata and I think it was a Green Belt Kata I was going to switch Al Benjamin in instead of Jay Mo. Chris and I talked about it and we decided that he had cut so much weight and put in so much time that it would be unfair to change it. Giving Jay Mo his pre-fight speech I told him not to play around and finish him as quickly as he can.
The 3rd fighter was Zach and this was a pro fight and meant that it was a match with 3 rounds of 5 minutes each. This was his 2nd pro fight and it is always comical when the pros are in a show because the state regulatory commission gets involved. I wish we had filmed that part of the show because it was like a Saturday Night Live skit. It is amazing what a little authority does to people. All the fighters were put into a big room and everyone was hanging and relaxing when one of the commissioner guys starts barking orders for the pros to move to this part of the room and the amateurs to stay where they are. After about 10 minutes another commissioner stands up and says all the pros move to where the amateurs and the amateurs move where the pros are. I really thought they were joking but we all did it. About 30 minutes after that they said that everyone needed to move again because the corners needed to be split up so red corner fighters should be over here and blue corner fighters over there. About 10 minutes after we moved into our areas which are rooms about as big as a garage, the same commissioner guy stood up and said that all the pros and amateurs would have to stay on their sides of this little room! That’s about when Brian Crenshaw stood up and said enough, “no, we are not going to move or split the group anymore.” I guess the guy realized how stupid it was because he listened.
All I kept thinking about is why it always takes a few hours when you have to go to the State Run DMV or MVA (Division of Motor Vehicles or Motor Vehicle Administration). This example explained it all:).
Zach finished his fighter who was a really good wrestler and a seasoned MMA fighter in less than a minute. Zach also picked up a great sponsor http://www.criticalfightgearstore.com/pages/home/.
They sponsor a lot of UFC fighters and are expecting big things from Zach. You can also check out what his manager wrote about him and if you have time leave a comment for Zach. The more fans the more chances he will have to get into the bigger shows!
http://www.suckerpunchent.com/events/4-big-wins-for-suckerpunch/
Al Benjamin and Ben Brophy trained really hard for this fight only to find out the day of the fight that their guys had pulled out. This is the bad thing about amateur fighters; they are not bound by a contract or anything else to show up to fight. The only repercussion you have as a promoter is not letting them fight on any future cards. It is also a small community of promoters so their name gets blackballed. Stay tuned, they will be fighting next month.
Overall it was a great night with some heroes that did not get the spotlight. The main one was Chris Lujan who always goes to the next level to get the W for the fighters. He was up at 5 am before the weigh-ins getting Jay Mo in the sauna and getting him where he needed to be. He also took charge of getting all the fighters to where they needed to be. Chris has become a great coach who knows what it takes because he has been there. He also knows my vision and what I expect and I rarely have to say anything because he basically knows it before I say it. It has turned into a great team with him doing most of the strength and conditioning while I do more of the technique training. If you see Chris this week, give him major props!
I also would like to thank another couple of heroes - Nichole Cassler, MD and Erica Gawrys, RN. They both came down Friday night to make sure the fighters were rehydrated. They were also on hand the fight night in case we needed any more medical attention. They are both in the Military and joined at a time when being sent to combat is almost guaranteed, so they are used to being heroes.
No comments:
Post a Comment