W-1 is Montreal’s best kept secret

It’s got to take guts to start a fight promotion. Especially when the events have to occur in a different province, because MMA is illegal in your hometown. Such is the case with W-1, which is based in Ontario but held its most-recent card in Montreal on Saturday.

There were many warriors at the event. The fighters who risked life and limb for little financial gain, the promoters who risk high stakes on an out-of-town MMA event and, unfortunately, those of us who drove from Ontario to cover the event.

The Pierre Charbonneau Centre was nearly empty (it felt like there were more people in Schwartz’s deli downtown), which is surprising, as W-1 has great TV production values (shown on The Score and FOX Sports in the States), and some serious star power in the house: Wandelia Silvia, Carlos Newton, Denis Kang and Patrick Cote were there to support the fighters, including Jason MacDonald, Shonie Carter, John Alessio and Nabil Khatib and others.

The emptiness of the arena and the strippers’ perfume give the air  a bad stench. When the strippers try to rile up the few in attendance, it’s depressing, like a high school pep rally with brand-new plastic titties.

I don’t like the strippers. Most sports try and avoid wardrobe malfunctions. W-1 gives them ring time (not just between rounds) to prance around and plug their strip joint. Call me an MMA purist but if MMA was supposed to have strippers, there would be a pole in the cage.

The fights were good, they were what I came for and I was impressed. There is something intimate about these small promotions, and not just because of the size of the venue. Many of the local fighters (local being Ontario and Quebec) have brought a small entourage of fans with them. Rooting for friends, family and the people you train with has a distinctly different feel than cheering for some random dude on The Ultimate Fighter.

Small productions are hugely important for the future of MMA. The question that remains for W-1 is if an MMA fight happens in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a noise?