Are we not entertained? Yes, we are: WEC 48’s Zombie attack earns Fight of the Year consideration

Sometimes words just aren’t enough. But here are a few to describe WEC 48’s three-round Fight of the Night (and possibly of the year) between Leonard Garcia and Chan Sung Jung: Jaw-dropping, sloppy, gutsy, thrilling, relentless, unpredictable, entertaining as hell.

For three rounds, Garcia and Chan played rock ‘em sock ‘em robots in a preliminary fisticuffs that set the stage for a fantastic card and reminded a lot of people of  the classic Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar go-for-broke donnybrook.

Garcia threw fastballs and Chan countered, living up to his nickname, the Korean Zombie – the only thing that was going to stop him from coming forward was if Garcia chopped his head off. Punches and kicks and elbows and knees connected with skulls and torsos and faces and legs and anything else that was within range. Bruised and battered and bloody but unbeaten, the two stood and wailed on each other with  edge-of-your-seat kitchen-sink attacks. At any moment, either could have fallen, either could have landed the finishing blow, either could have given up from exhaustion.

But they didn’t, and when the dust settled, the judges handed Garcia the split decision, one that I felt should’ve gone in the Korean’s favour. After all, he did continually press the attack against an occasionally retreating Garcia and he did also land the only knockdowns of the bout. Doesn’t matter, though. It was a great big messy battle with two fighters with more heart than skills who showed up to do something few other fighters of late seem to want to do – entertain.

If you happened to miss the fight, here’s a crummy video of what you missed.