Category — MMA

photo by Vernon Anthony Kee

I would normally never let someone drive me to the Hershey Centre, the  sports complex in Mississauga, unless they wined and dined me first. A rule I should have heeded. Last night was theScores Fighting Series, the first MMA event fully organized by the network.

The Score had done a great job of promotion leading up to the fights, making video promos of some of the local fighters and giving the event a lot of coverage on their station. But after the shock and awe of UFC 129 at the Rogers Centre (and the smaller yet no-less-remarkable rumble created by The Reckoning at Casino Rama), theScore Fighting Series had big shoes to fill. Of course, there’s no way for a promotion to compete with the UFC juggernaut. That said, I could not help but feel that the event lacked production value.

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Tonight’s theScore Fighting Series event at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga (that’s just outside Toronto, for you non-locals), is one of the most-stacked homegrown MMA cards Canadian fans have ever had.

DREAM 170-pound kingpin Marius Zaromskis will square off against Jordan Mein in the main event. Mein has already fought three times this year, including a gutsy win over Josh Burkman at Ontario’s first sanctioned event, The Reckoning at Casino Rama, in April. Zaromskis, meanwhile, tooled up PRIDE legend Kazushi Sakuraba in his last fight at K-1 Dynamite!

Slugger Joe Doerksen , the hardest working fighter in Canada, will take on Luigi Fioravanti while UFC vet Thierry Sokoudjou and Martin Desilets will square off in the three highlight bouts. And by highlight, I mean they’re the last three bouts on the 11-bout card. I’m expecting plenty of memorable moments throughout the deck, as Antonio Carvalho, one of the top featherweights not signed to a major promotion, takes on Doug Evans and bantamweight stand-out Adrian Wooley faces Bellator veteran Nick Mamalis.

A bit further down the card, you know FW will be pulling for Toronto BJJ head instructor Jorge Britto, who takes on Kurth Southern. Britto put on the unofficial Fight of the Night slugfest at Casino Rama with Jason Young, who makes his UFC debut at UFC 131 on Saturday.

And keep your eye on Muay Thai specialist Alex Ricci, who’s got one MMA fight under his belt after a lengthy kickboxing career. Ricci will face Mike Sledzion.

On Facebook a couple of weeks ago, Revolution MMA’s Joel Gerson posted the video of his famous victory over Japanese Shooto legend Rumina Sato. Within hours, good-natured comments about the Jewish fighter and the stunned Japanese crowd appeared.

It got me thinking: In today’s world, the Jewish fighter is an anomaly. Once upon a time, though, Jewish fighters were the norm, not the exception.

The stereotype of the North American Jew tends to be one of intellectual might, not athletic prowess. I am as guilty of thinking this way as anyone else.  When I think Jew, the image is more likely to be of starving Holocaust survivors and Woody Allen, than of a boxer or Bugsy Siegel. The Holocaust has left us with the impression of Jews as victims, meekly walking, without protest, to their deaths. This amounts to little more than cultural and historical amnesia on the part of the Jewish community and society as a whole.

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Helping my post-UFC 129 hangover is official news about June 10’s Score Fighting Series card in Mississauga. It’s a solid card, with UFC and PRIDE FC vet Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, UFC vet Joe Doerksen and others (including my instructor, Jorge Britto). No mention of DREAM welterweight champ Marius Zaromskis, who’s rumoured for the event, although as of a few days ago that deal hadn’t been signed. Here’s the press release:

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Fightville is a gritty and brilliantly gripping bruises-and-all documentary about small town fighters with UFC dreams, and it far surpasses my already high expectations. I’ve just come from a screening of the film, which focuses on UFC vet Tim Credeur and a couple of his proteges (notably, UFC newcomer Dustin Poirier), and I’ll be writing a full review a little closer to its premiere at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto on April 28. But I want to get a few impressions out there while they’re still fresh (and while you still have time to seek out tickets to one of its three Hot Docs screenings).

No hyperbole here, this is a sharply observed and richly told drama about what it means to be a fighter. Not the big-money contracts and sponsorship deals and pay-per-view bonuses, not the ring card girls and cage fighter groupies, not the glamour and the glory and spectacle of arena-filling action heroes like Anderson Silva or Georges St. Pierre. This isn’t some glorified Tapout commercial.

This is about the average guy, the average guy who also likes to throw down, who likes to hit and be hit, who finds a certain peace and centeredness once the cage door clangs shut behind him, who goes from mild-mannered Clark Kent to Superman-punching cage fighter, who does it because he doesn’t know how to do anything else, even if it means making 500 bucks a night to get his face punched in while working in a restaurant kitchen to make the mortgage payments.

Guys like Poirier can be found in almost every serious, legitimate MMA gym in the world. And filmmakers Mike “The Truth” Tucker and Petra Epperlein, who made the amazing Iraq War doc Gunner Palace, take us into that world in a way that is visceral and real and as intense as any documentary can be. After the screening several critics asked me if that’s what the MMA world is really like and the answer, plain and simple, is yes.

It’s obvious that the filmmakers were given unprecedented access to their subjects, notably Poirier and Gil Guillory, an always-hustling promoter for the barn-burning feeder organization USA MMA and a family man who’s earnest passion for keeping his business afloat is a sharp and refreshing contrast to the image of shady promoters with a used car salesmen sheen. In fact, it’s Guillory and his wife who help put the whole sport in perspective with their insights into the school of hard knocks.

The photography is vibrant and alive and in-your-face, especially during the training sessions and bouts, but without that amped-up and over-processed Tapout commercial gloss, which makes the stories being told all the more vivid and their impact all the sharper, like the snap of a four-ounce glove to your cerebral cortex. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack just plain rocks.

And not to take anything away from Tucker and Epperlein, but they struck cinematic gold with their cast. Credeur is a grizzled marine-drill-instructor-type character who reminded me of a slightly gentler, more philosophical (and definitely crazier) John Kreese whom young fighters willingly follow into battle, grinding it out day after day in a few hundred square feet of gym in Lafayette, Louisiana, all in the hopes of earning a spot on Guillory’s roster.

As I’d hoped, Fightville does what all great documentaries do – it burrows deep into its subject to unearth larger, more universal truths. Sure, the film will easily satisfy MMA fans (at least to the point that they’ll be tearing up the seats demanding more), but it should also excite casual viewers who perhaps aren’t interested in fighting or are even turned off by the thought of it. Because while the moral/political good-or-evil debate surrounding MMA is touched on, the film shies away from making any judgments and simply humanizes the people involved. It shows what it means to be a fighter, blood and broken bones and bad pay cheques and all, and it does it with respect for its subjects and for its audience. I couldn’t ask for more than than.

Addition: I’ll get into more of this at a later date, but I couldn’t not mention Albert Stainback, one of the young fighters profiled in the film whose cage entrance is an homage to A Clockwork Orange. Fucking brilliant. Jason “Mayhem” Miller must be kicking himself for not having thought of it first.

When professional MMA opened for business in Ontario on Saturday it was to the ear-splitting doom metal of Rammstein, the walk-in music for Alberta fighter Brandt Dewsberry. But that was the only false note struck during MMA: The Reckoning, the first-ever sanctioned event in the province. Indeed, if the eight-fight card is any indication, the business of mixed martial arts here will be very, very good.

More than 5,000 fight fans crammed Casino Rama, an hour north of Toronto, for the historic card. It didn’t matter that the biggest names in attendance were UFC referees “Big” John McCarthy, Dan Miragliotta and Yves Lavigne. The opportunity to watch MMA live, to hear the smack of leather against flesh from 15 feet away, was enough to get the blood pumping.

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Casino Rama, in partnership with Knockout Entertainment Canada, had big gloves to fill as it hosted Ontario’s first
sanctioned MMA event on Saturday. On top of making history, MMA: The Reckoning did so at the risk of being a “dog and pony show” compared to the UFC’s “Big Top,” which comes to town on April 30.

Up until this point if Ontario fans wanted to watch MMA it usually meant a road trip to Quebec or flight to Vegas. Having MMA at our doorstep was amazing and Rama and Knockout did a bang up job of putting Ontario’s best foot forward into the cage, at this historic premier event.

Oddly enough, the most recognizable faces at the event were not the fighters but the referees. Names like “Big” John McCarthy, Dan Miragliotta and Yves Lavigne of UFC fame added an air of legitimacy to the evening. The crowd was pumped and the event was near capacity, drawing more paying customers to Rama’s 5,200-seat auditorium than any of the previous 13 boxing shows held there.

The production values were excellent, with the requisite metal music before the fights began, pyrotechnics when the fighters came out and large screens and TV camera work good enough to watch the action when the fights went to the ground.

Despite no major names on the card, most of the fights were excellent. The highlight being the fight of the night between English lightweight Jason “Shotgun” Young and Jorge Britto, from Toronto BJJ (confession time, this is where I train).

If last nights event is any indication, it is evident that sanctioned MMA in Ontario means more than just the UFC, its big names, pomp and circumstance. It also means getting a chance to cheer for local fighters in a more intimate setting at affordable prices. I could not be more excited about it.

While the rest of the MMA world will be paying attention to tonight’s Bellator 39 lightweight title tilt between champ Eddie Alvarez and Pat Curran, those of us in Ontario will be celebrating the first-ever sanctioned pro MMA card in the province’s history. In fact, the FW team will be road-tripping to Casina Rama north of Toronto for MMA: The Reckoning, an event that appears to already be sold out (some 5,000 fans are expected through the turnstiles, which is great news for homegrown MMA).

UFC vet Josh Burkman headlines a welterweight bout with Jordan Mein of Lethbridge, Alta., while the co-main event features WEC and IFL vet Chris Horodecki of London, ON., in a lightweight battle with David Castillo. Meanwhile, British Ultimate Fighter cast member Dean Amasinger faces Matt MacGrath at 170 pounds.

Not a bad way to kick off professional MMA in the province, although to be honest I’m a bit more excited for a couple of bouts a little further down on the eight-fight card. There’s light heavyweight monsters Misha Cirkunov vs. Ion Cherdivara and a lightweight match-up between Jason Young and Jorge Britto, who’s the head instructor at Toronto BJJ where many of us FightingWords folks train.

After crapping on the Georges St. Pierre doc The Striking Truth a couple of weeks back I began to wonder why no one has made a truly great documentary about mixed martial arts. Well, somebody just might have.

Fightville has premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, to strong reviews (it’s been compared to sports doc Bigger, Stronger, Faster) and the trailer certainly looks promising. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the filmmakers, Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, are true documentarians – they made Gunner Palace and How to Fold a Flag – and aren’t interested in Tapout commercial-level gloss and hagiography. They want the real story and the real story is guys like Dustin Poirier and Albert Stainback, fighters for whom the UFC is a distant dream (the doc was made before Poirier made his WEC debut at WEC 50 and he’s since fought at UFC 125).

From the Cinematical review:

Fightville is not particularly interested in psychoanalyzing its subjects; nor does the film attempt to mythologize MMA as some sort of return to the ideals of the Spartans. Tucker and Epperlein show, instead, that MMA is a sport that does a lot of work for a lot of people — providing a life purpose to some, spiritual fulfillment to others, a livelihood to many, and entertainment to many more. They do so by introducing us to four bright, interesting people who fit none of the stereotypes we associate with MMA, its participants, and its fans. Fightville is a subtle but powerful rebuke to the shallow thinking that pigeonholes this sort of sport as subhuman brutality. In the process, it casts into doubt the prevailing attitudes toward violence in general.

Fightville is a clinic in documentary craft. With a propulsive, percussive soundtrack, a fast pace, and terrific fight photography, the movie is rousing and suspenseful. In many ways, it tells an old-fashioned story — one about the value of hard work, the importance of dreams, and the challenge of finding meaning and purpose in adversity. That Fightville tells this story in the context of a controversial and widely disdained subculture makes it one of the best films of the year.