Martial Arts Geek on Patrol

On being invited to cover this event I decided to study it on three levels: as a promotion; as a sanctioned athletic event; and, most importantly, fight-by-fight. I was granted full access to every aspect of the event from 2:00 PM thru close. I was unable to interview every fighter and official but did have the best seat in the house for every fight. This is nothing more than a written account of my observations, impressions and opinions. Hopefully you will find it informative on one or more levels.

The Promoter

Noel Smith, an American Top Team black belt, who operates his own club out of Glen Burnie, Maryland promoted the event. Noel promotes as Maryland Cage Combat. I am sure that there are at least two hardworking people that help him put all of this together, but did not manage to identify or interrogate them. As a promoter and owner of the club that provided many of the fighters he stayed in the background and did not get involved in any aspect of handling his team during the event. Noel did provide me with an excellent plate of pulled pork and the best baked beans I ever had. So my investigative journalistic scrutiny of the fat-cat promoter has come to an end. Thanks Noel.

The Fixer

Now, with the promoter being busy running to the pit-beef stand to get my chow, you can well imagine he needed some help running this event. Remember, athletic events run on two levels: as an officiated contest, and as the social gathering that hosts the contest. The whole gathering is 'The Promotion' a chaotic beast that needs to be handled by someone. I finally stumbled on this someone when I started asking if anyone could break a twenty so I could buy a pop tart. At a boxing event nobody can ever break a twenty! Hell, boxing guys have to borrow beer money. When I found the man with the knot-roll of ones, it occurred to me that I had found 'the fixer', the go-to-guy that thrives in chaos.

Nate Shook is a smart young man from Allentown PA, who has promoted 47 of his own MMA events nationwide, but mostly in the Mid Atlantic Region. Nate manages fighters and bands, runs Splitlip Fightwear, an advertising network, and even finds time to direct a custom car and chopper business. While Nate was doing about a dozen different things with as many people I managed to lob some questions at him. His answers are summarized below:

• He arranged to have the cage brought in from Wilkes Barre PA. I've been there. If the chick you are marrying suggests you settle down in Wilkes Barre go join the French Foreign Legion, now.
• Athletic Commissions or 'state sanctioning bodies' are a mixed bag, and often do not sanction MMA events, but are always present to take their cut of the door receipts. I sat next to two of the Maryland State Athletic Commission guys. One of them was useful, and noted a problem with glove tape, and had it rectified by the Chief Official. In Maryland and Virginia the commissions only get involved in actually sanctioning the contest at the pro level. At the amateur level they are essentially tax collection agents who appreciate a good power bomb when they see it.
• Promotions in surrounding states that were mentioned included One World MMA [D.C.], Global Combat Alliance [Virginia/ D.C.] and Pick-Your-Fight Promotions [Eastern Virginia].
• Maryland events are officiated by the AAMMA.
• Events in surrounding states are sanctioned by other organizations including the ISKA.
• The thing that struck Nate as the most unusual about working an AAMMA event was the use of shin-guards by the fighters. He just had not seen this in any other state.

The Officials

I managed to interview most of the officials. These people were accessible, and honestly I felt better about bothering them than I did about hassling the fighters for information. Also, I'm writing this for the fighters, and I thought they could use some inside information. It can never hurt to know a thing or two about the people who hold your athletic fate in their aging hands. If you are a corner-man you definitely want to tune into this part of the article.

AAMMA Representative [Chief Official]. Lawrence A. Brizzi
"Breeze", as most people call him, is a big alpha-male ex-marine karate-guy who I met in 2002. Just after we were introduced he suggested we box in front of our students. I suggested we not! Succumbing to my awesome powers of suggestion Breeze withdrew his generous offer to beat my ass; empirical evidence that he can be negotiated with. The thing to remember about dealing with Breeze is the Marine part. He likes tough guys who say "Yes sir". So, go bullshit somebody else.

AAMMA Referees rotate in and out of one of the three judges' seats and are charged first and foremost with the safety of the fighters. They are taught to error on the side of caution, which is the opposite of what you, as the fighter, are taught. This contradiction has to exist in order for an organization to field safe and entertaining fights.

Referee Paul Lazatti was once the guy who ran USA Boxing in Maryland. He's a bartender by trade which means he works hard and doesn't get pissed easy. Now Paul comes to combat sports as a fan not as a practitioner. He's the ultimate fight geek and feels a great deal of responsibility for the fighters; who are his heroes after all. This amounts to a guy that is strict about the rules, and very aggressive about being clear on rule changes and those places where rules get murky. If he were a football ref you would want him in charge when a game went into overtime.

Referee Gary Utterback was a fighter for 30 years. He is one of those Chinese stylists with a reputation for full-contact. He has fought overseas and has done a lot of refereeing under the World Organization of Wushu Kung Fu for Sanshou bouts. Gary is the strongest ref in the cage and will be able to make the closest calls. You will be able to take bigger risks with him in there, but will also be able to get away with less. The thing to remember about Gary is he is an experienced fighter. He is not going to be happy with corner-men who care more about their team's reputation than their fighter. After seeing him in action I'd say he's easily a pro-level ref.

Eric Jordan is the ref I didn't get to interview so I don't know anything more about him than what I gleaned when I was eating lunch while Gary conducted the final officials' meeting. Eric was the guy that listened the most. That's a good sign when your safety is in his hands. In the cage he saved one of the fighters from a needless KO of the unconscious kind, called a foul that only him, Judge Ron Lygren, me and the fighter seemed to see, and showed a lot of concern for fighter safety. If you just want to prove how tough you are Eric is going to stop it.

AAMMA Physicians were recruited from that tiny slice of the medical community that practices martial arts. Both of these men have been involved in full-contact fighting. I did not have the opportunity to interview Dr. Arnel Castrence but did see a lot of his work from about 15 feet. I did have two extensive interviews with Dr. David Lumsden, who came from the hospital in his scrubs.

David Lumsden was perhaps the most experienced full-contact fighter in the building. He is the team doctor for a number of scholastic athletic teams, and was still an active tri-athlete into his early forties. He is a jock's jock. He actually sleeps and eats on a stationary bike!

There was some concern among fans and corner-man about medical stoppages and one referee stoppage. Here are some quotes from Doc Lumsden from after the fight:

"Look, I get it that this is the biggest thing these guys have been involved in, and that in their mind it's 'do or die'. But this is not the pros, and losing on a stoppage is not going to hurt the fighter's moneymaking potential, so we have different parameters. The one guy took four unanswered shots to the body. Now sure, he can take that, but we are not allowing head-shots [on the ground] until these guys get more experience. If those had been headshots that fight is called anywhere any time. After a few fights they [AAMMA] are going to start allowing more contact so gaming the rules at this level will ultimately retard a fighter's development."

"The one guy with the eye, you ask him and he tells you he can't see a thing, and you check his peripheral, and he can't see a hook coming—boom, done, kayo, suspension. And the corner-man is like, 'He's fine, let him fight, look he can see!' Are you kidding me dude, really? You've got to protect these guys. Nobody else is going to."

From my observation the two-doctor system worked well, and the doctors each worked well with each other. When you have a medical issue in the cage not only do you have a doctor right there, but a second opinion without a referral. It's better than going to the HMO.

AAMMA Judges Bryant Parker and Ron Lygren are both long-time martial artists. I did not get to interview Bryant, but he was nice enough not to crush my hand when we were introduced. He belongs to that class of what I call 'frightening karate guys' and I think he's going to be fun to watch as a ref.

Ron Lygren is an ex-marine from Boston so you know what he likes, "Fighta's who'll fight their asses off!"

Ron used to be a boxing referee and he was a good one. I sat next to Ron and his understudy [a judge in training] and he confided in me after the Jamal Johnson versus Nick Manthos fight, "I gave one round to each—it was so hard to judge because they rolled so good. I was relieved that it was stopped, not that I wanted to see a kid get stopped, but because I was so torn between who to give that round to. Now that's a fight for you! These kids aren't like boxers—the one with the advantage hanging back. These guys come to fight!" When Ron's at cage-side, don't be that guy that 'hangs back'.

Scorekeeper/timekeeper Susan Bower was the person behind the scenes who actually managed the registration. Without somebody like her something like this is just a gathering of knuckleheads.

Dave Crandall was the gofer, gear-man and hand-wrap inspector. If you are a corner-man, you need to access Dave or his counterpart as soon as you get to one of these things. He is the guy with the rulebook and the gear. The AAMMA, and the sport at the amateur level in general, are still evolving, and things will be different from state-to-state. Find the gofer right off the bat and be the first corner-man to know what might be different about this event. To me, the gloves seemed odd, almost like a fingerless fencing gauntlet. Dave assured me they were 7 ounces, and provided me with a bout list hours before the officials got theirs'.

The Fighter Meeting

Nothing places MMA ahead of boxing in my mind more than the way it is officiated as a team-based sport. Boxing is a much lonelier sport. At boxing events there is no meeting where fighters, seconds and officials come together to make sure everyone is on the same page. This aspect of the MMA event can be traced back to karate tournaments and the 'Black Belt Meeting', where the guys who fought at the end of the day got together to go over their guidelines for officiating the earlier fights between their students.

Breeze was an entertaining speaker, which helped since he was going over such mundane stuff with a bunch of high-testosterone young men. The gist of his speech and the mission of the AAMMA can be best summed up in this edited quote from his meeting with the fighters:

"This is going to be a competition where you guys are learning. You are student athletes.

...You guys came here to fight, so fight. If you are going to get in there and run don't waste our time. This is about getting in there and facing your fears. Someone has to lose, but that doesn't have to make it a bad thing...We don't want anyone going out of here on their back... We don't want anyone walking out of here with a bad attitude. We want good sportsmanship."

The meeting focused on defining fouls and taping hands. Nobody in the room was an experienced hand taper. There were guys like me who had wrapped hands according to USA Boxing rules. But, to fight with an MMA glove the hand needs to be taped like it is for pro boxers. The hand-wrapping clinic was good. The results were mixed, with six of the fighters eventually complaining to the doctors about the wraps being tight. It is going to take some time for the corner-men to develop this skill, that is usually only possessed by one or two boxing trainers at a given gym.

Fight Time

MMA draws a lot of traditions and methods from boxing and there are so many similarities I have made a point of noting the differences. However, the single greatest difference between boxing and MMA events is...women!

At a typical boxing event over 95% of the spectators are men. Of the few women, not one is a wife, and most are better looking than the ring card girls and are hanging on the arm of some middle-aged rich guy. This event drew about 45% female spectators according to my precisely calibrated roving eye. [I had an event to cover you now, and was determined to leave no details uninvestigated.] There were two nice things about this. First, was the presence of families, with many sisters and wives, secondly was the fact that so many of these female MMA fans seem to be fitness conscious. This is a trend that I recommend continue until the only men in the building are the fighters and the old dude writing about.

The color guard presentation was nice, and the National Anthem performance was actually good. Then it was time for me to squeeze between an amplifier and a judges' table and take notes. On each page of my pad I put the Red Corner fighter [the crowd favorites, mostly from Noel's local club] and his team at the top left and the Blue Corner fighter [the visiting fighters] and his team at the top right. I then noted their activity sequentially. In a one-sided fight nothing might be written in one column and a lot in the other column. I was not attempting to generate a score, simply noting enough of the action so that I could reconstruct it as a narrative at the keyboard on Sunday morning.

The Teams

I had no chance to interview any coaches or corner-men, so my information on the gyms, schools and teams comes from the fighters—who I didn't quiz much—and is pretty sketchy. I will list the schools according to who fielded the most fighters. There were 28 fighters participating in 14 bouts. The team standings are listed below.

Listed Weights

One thing that has always bothered me about amateur fighting is the inaccurate weights reported by the announcer, who is given false weights for nearly half the fighters. This event was no different as far as reporting. The intent, however, was different, and for the better.

In boxing small 'hard-to-move' fighters are fed to larger fighters by their handler so that handler can get an advantageous matchup for another fighter of his he thinks will sell more tickets and hence give him more pull with the promoter. In contrast for this event, there was an actual stated attempt to match some guys with less experience against a slightly smaller fighter. The other problem is with the heavyweights and the small guys where there tends to be more size differences because of the small number of fighters at those weights.

I realize that the AAMMA does not want the crowd to think that they are arranging fights between men of different weights, but they are, and inaccurate weights should not be announced or recorded, whatever the intention. With so many ways to win and lose an MMA fight, I think the fans would appreciate knowing that one fighter was smaller than the other. Also, the fighters who give up weight should get some credit for it.

So for the weights listed below, they represent a prearranged verbal agreement to fight at or about that weight, but do not necessarily have anything to do with the fighter's actual weight. These should be treated as approximations of the fighters' weight.

I don't know how these weights were fudged, but in boxing, they announce the weight of the heaviest fighter as being the weight for both. My first boxer in the ring went into his first fight at 143 against a 151 pounder, and into his second fight at 143 against a 161 pounder, and the announcer stated that they both weighed 161 on both occasions! This kid fought his whole amateur career against guys who outweighed him by 5 to 20 pounds and never got credit for it. My second boxer was matched at 161 pounds against a 186 pounder in his first and only fight.

Yeah, I'm still pissed at USA Boxing.

The Fights

The faster the pace was the harder it was for me to take accurate notes. When unsure about a technique I have tried to generalize. I might have sequenced a couple of rounds inaccurately, depending on where the fighters were and how they were positioned relative to my seat. I tried to focus on aspects unique to a particular fight while summarizing the gaps between these highlights rather than give a blow-by-blow. My wrestling and BJJ terminology is weak, and my grappling experience has been primarily in stick-fights, so some of my descriptive terms may seem odd.

I'd like to thank all of you fighters for a great night at the fights.

James, Sunday, April, 15th 2012