Underneath the impressive stack of professional MMA bouts was an altogether astounding 10 amateur bouts, all of which ended by radical manuevers, brutal knock-outs, and/or hideous upsets. Even for those to whom an extensive card might not appeal, the density was paired well with suitable intensity. 

Fighting out of local gyms on the amateur card were AJ Cobb, and Cody Sutherland of Rough House MMA in Bremerton.  Jake Blaski fought out of Hybrid of Bremerton. Blaski took home a win for Hybrid via armbar (no surprises there, as Hybrid maintains their intensive focus in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu).  

Of the six Pro-bouts, two of our home towners took the stage. Lonya Champion fought out of Rough House, Bremerton, and Carl Edwards (main event) fought out of Full Circle Fight Club, Bremerton.

Champion and Orr walked away from the bout disappointed after Orr tapped out due to landing in a position which compromised his arm in some way. No call was shared over the loud speakers.

Carl Edwards lost in the third round via decision to Darrio Mobley. Mobley, throughout each round, managed to accumulate points in high numbers. Edwards was able to land audibly powerful blows to Mobley throughout, but Mobley did maintain a calmness that even Edwards regarded admirably in a follow-up interview.

“I had to give him props,” Edwards said. “I hurt him, and I know that because I have broken peoples ribs before, just practicing. He was able to remain calm enough to where I had to try angering him,” said Edwards. He attempted to get verbally aggressive with Mobley in order to overwhelm him.

“He stayed collected,” Edwards continued. “There are a lot of people who wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Mobley celebrated with several of his trainors after the bout. “I wanted to keep him in side-mount,” said Mobley. Carl is faster, stronger, and more technical than the last time I fought him.”

Dark Horse Entertainment plans on bringing another highly saturated card on June 8th. Mobley will be competing again.

Where I was, amid the first pangs of my curiosity toward Mixed Martial Arts competition a little over a year ago, I find myself once again.  I am making an investigative advance into the competitive sport of boxing. Honestly, I know very little. That needs to change.

As much as I love the MMA world, and as progressively more familiar with it I am becoming, I am still seeking something sacred.

Stepping in the ring against Jeff Holcomb really woke me up to the fact that, sure, you can have someone place you in a stance and give you basic instructions in blocking, kicking, and punching. You can watch all the fights you want. You can rent Dragon, the Bruce Lee story. You can go to the gym a couple times and get tossed around for practice. None of that really matters. You need to have the conditions in your life which are conducive to becoming a competitive fighter, or it will never happen.

Writing is my blues. It is what gives me a chance to perform and deliver a product with a particular intention. Fighting is attractive because the intention is quite simple. Winning is the intention.

When you observe a sport and become familiar with the rules, (and I’m repeating myself, but…) all the complicated politics of the world seem to disintegrate. The only politics that matter when you watch a sport are the rules and procedures of that sport. Losing in competition is obviously emblematic of death, but really, even the concept of death is more laid back when fighting is a competitive outlet.

Liberal, conservative, black, white, smart, dumb, it doesn’t matter in combat. Statistics matter, but even then, not everything that happens can be predicted, and no outcome is inevevitable based on mathematics alone. Mind and spirit are very real in these realms. Faith in yourself can have overwhelmingly positive effects on the outcome of a bout. Pride or ego can effect outcomes as well, and they do not always lead to victory.

What do I expect to find in boxing? I want to get a better glance at strategy. There is obviously strategy within MMA competition, but all it takes is a sneeze, or a glance away to jot down an important note, and you can miss the lightning strike. I want to see every lightning strike as it takes place, and to get a better idea of what this factor is that leads to competitive victory. 

Boxing, being channeled through punching, foot-motion, blocking, etc., will allow me to rest my mind on fewer descriptions. That is where Rougheart MMA Journal will begin to grow further.

I have seen wrestling take its place in the sport, as well as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I have seen boxing take a strange form, and martial arts of all sorts, from the secret arts of Arnese, to the popular mainstream arts such as boxing and Tae Kwon Do. They all have a place in MMA.
Boxing is still alive and well, and today’s boxing idols are even highly revered by the head fighters in the professional circuit of MMA. I am sure quite a few local pros would love to see how Floyd Money Mayweather stands against them in the cage.
That isn’t what this is about though. I am not asking about which sport is better, which is more important, etc. I am looking for origins, more fight-language. This will improve the MMA coverage.

Bergstrom curled me into a few common positions, and even got me with the “tickle me Elmo” submission. “Yeah, we don’t tap to the tickle me Elmo submission,” he explains, driving his fingers into my armpit as I am unable to escape. This was the most exercise I think that my abdominal muscles have ever had. Trying to escape from these positions seemed close to impossible to me, and the technical knowledge is weighty. Not as simple to write about as Joe punching Sam in the face with a left, and Sam kicking Joe in the ribs with a right. This involves reflective strategy, much like that required in a game of chess.

Bergstrom pits me against a 185′er named Matt, who looks a bit like Zangief from the video game “Streetfighter”. I have a hard time believing him when he tells me his weight-class. I think of Skyscraper Struve, the tallest fighter in the UFC right now, but sporting an over-sized beard. Matt thrashes me around like a rag-doll, and isn’t as friendly as Bergstrom when it comes to pinning someone down. My jaw is still a bit bruised from where he pushed the top of his head down on me against the gym mats. The only reason I didn’t tap at that point was because I couldn’t move my arms. At first, I was actually tapping my own torso, thinking “I know I give up!”

Then I was happy to be pitted against Will Montgomery, who I introduced myself to, and explained why he was one of my favorite fighters in the Northwest. Here is the review I wrote for Northwest Fightscene with him as the main event:

http://www.nwfightscene.com/CWC-ShipyardBrawl-IV.htm

Montgomery, like Matt earlier, also had the courtesy of not going easy on a newcomer. Like a boa constrictor, Montgomery found ways of bending my body until I felt like whimpering. I wanted to tap at one point when he had turned his entire body around to grab one of my legs while he pretty much used my face as a stool. The final position I ended up in would have been morbidly painful if he was in a serious competition and intended forcing someone to submit. I lay down looking up at the ceiling after our session was over, understanding now that there was just one more part of this MMA gig that I needed to get to the bottom of.

Wrestling, and grappling skills in general, can obviously turn a cagefighter into even more of a threat in the cage. If you land down on the mats when you had been hoping for a good stand-up fight, and have your face squashed under Will Montgomery while he ties your legs in knots at your knees and ankles, that could be the end of your bout, easily.

Bobby Lawrence mentioned Landon Showalter’s Arlington Submission Challenge to me, and suggested I should accompany them. I’m taking him up on the challenge, and will be running a feature on it in January. I need the knowledge.

The thought had crossed my mind in the phone call to Holcomb, that this might not actually even take place, a fight between myself and the former Marine, former police officer, who is well versed in Mixed Martial Arts, knows the ropes, and has even lended me a seat as a sort of apprentice to his knowledge thereof.

“Well, I think I can get this blog up and running if I could get a fight,” I said. “I would like it to be against you.”

Holcomb went over this with me for a bit. He ran over a few possibilities of some of the local independent fighters with me, but I had my heart set, and I’m pretty sure he knew that.

“Are you sure you want me punching you and stuff, buddy?” he asks, trying to avoid the seriousness of the statement by chuckling a bit.

You have to realize, I know this guy is tough. He’d be tough even without any formal martial arts training, or any background in the military or police force, but he has quite a bit of knowledge. He had admitted to me once when he started training out of Full Circle Fight Club that he wasn’t as tough as he thought he was. Regardless, I can remember the story about Jeff dangling a fresh young punk over a balcony at Heads Up Brewery for getting rude with my wife who was my girlfriend at the time. I had to meet this guy.

It is hard not to love a person like Jeff, and it isn’t necessarily that there is anything specific you can place on it. He just happens to be the extraordinary type. He brews beer, beer brings crowds, crowds bring interesting individuals, and Jeff is just plain good with crowds. Probably something to do with that military experience. He is also a bit unpredictable. Somewhere in his experiences, it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that something turned in his life to make him decide he was going to squeeze it like a lemon.

Additionally, he has been behind my MMA writing 100%, and has done everything he can to help me make it succeed. While battling the obstacles to getting a fully operational brewery where he can perform his art as a master brewer, he hasn’t scrubbed me away as an annoyance, and has even gone so far as to become a proud sponsor of Cage Warrior Combat, and even Dustin Praxedes, local professional MMA fighter who is turning his body into an all-out MMA assualt weapon.

Let us talk about beer for a second, and seriously. This should not be a taboo subject, and I am not going to allow any finger-wagging when it comes to this. Especially when it comes to the local brewers, who are honest workers, their success depending almost entirely on science, creativity, and chance.  A good beer is hard to make, and skilled brewers are able to make it. Jeff is a skilled brewer.

Why am I bringing this subject up? Because I was there when Jeff worked at “Heads Up Brewery” in Silverdale, and I know the heartache they went through there. Everyone at Heads Up was well aquainted with one another, and very close. The exact details behind the closing of Heads Up is a bit beyond my knowledge, and none of my actual business, but I know it was a drag for everyone involved. They lost a good friend to a heart condition who had worked there with them, and it really shook the spirits of the crew.

Also, Jeff brewed the beer for my wife and I on our wedding day, and the wedding was amazing. A rainbow appeared over the reception-hall that day, cigars were smoked, and Jeff wore a kilt to the wedding, along with all the rest of the Heads Up Clan. Hard to forget. 

His beer, and his personality are marked as very valuable to my wife and I, and to our family and friends as well. So when I go to Valholl Brewing, on the rare occasion that my wife and I can work out the time between our children and work, it is with happiness for Jeff and his wife Katie, who deserve prosperity.

So, it was a difficult fight to take, because what can be said about getting into the cage with someone you genuinely care about, and attempting to break their face open? Jeff had a hard time with this, and I suppose I did too.

Carl Edwards, 3-1, had said something at first, before coming around and encouraging the fight with compassionate consideration. “I don’t know if its going to be the real thing, only because you might be holding back if you’re fighting your buddy.”

Something occured to me a few days later, when I began running at 224 to 226 lbs, to attempt cutting to 205. What if I did hold back? What good would that do for a friendship? If Jeff was willing to accept a fight with me, and take it seriously, didn’t he deserve the real thing?

I was actually a bit concerned that I might freeze up entirely, and that he would have no choice but to just submit me, or land one good safe strike that landed me out in the first round. I couldn’t let that happen.

Jeff told me a few weeks before the fight that he had begun to plateau around 218 lbs. We agreed on a catch weight instead of going to 205. 210 to 215 lbs was where we were aiming, and I knew that Jeff had a lot of beer to move, always has the big family to take care of, the brewery to worry about, minimal time to get in the gym, but an all out thirst to be in the cage and fight.

I had also heard through the grape-vine that he was obstaining from serious combative training, to give me a bit of a fair advantage.

Fine then. I was going to come in at a weight and stamina that had the potential to take this friend of mine out unexpectedly. I also took pointers from people across the board.

“Work that jab, work that jab. Stay on that outside foot,” Jonathan Moore told me one evening when I came up to visit him in the sleep lab. I had covered his last fight against Billy Walker from Everett, and it was the first published article I got in the Kitsap Sun. Moore showed me a few of the possible things Holcomb might attempt, whether standing, going to take me down, etc. I applied this to my regiment after my last few long runs pre-fight.

I pushed myself to that point the instructors all tried to get me at in bootcamp during a run, when your entire body just wants to quit. I pushed it for as long as I could, sprinted a few times during runs and went back down to jogging speed, held my arms up high to get the blood moving when I just couldn’t run anymore, and made sure to breath deep to keep that cardio good for the cage.

I also thought about all the different types of fear Jeff could instill in me from across the cage in the blue corner. What if he stomps and growls? I thought. I might piss myself if he snarls. So I would have to work on a game face.

What if I freeze up as I walk into the cage, go pale white, pass out… Oh no!

I would have to get a good entrance song going to pump myself up. My wife had suggested one of my favorite Beastie Boys tunes, “Sabotage”. That would get me going, and pump up that audience.

So last night, when Jeff and I were finally suited up in gloves, cups, mouthpieces, vasoline on our faces, face to face in that cage, I felt that fear and excitement. The color in the room changed. Everything got a bit more “real looking” for lack of a better word. The risk of defeat swept over me, and the chance at victory. I couldn’t believe it. It was astounding.

No turning back. Cage doors lock. I thought I might have a real advantage over Jeff now, because he was a bit heavier than me. I weighed in at 209.5, and he came in at 218 on the button. I could probably just gas him, and stumble him a bit with some jabs before I layed into him as he tired.

I was so wrong.

I came in to touch gloves, and Jeff had a look on his face that I hadn’t seen since being scolded for swearing as a child.

“Don’t quiver,” I thought. “That’ll just get me hurt. Look death at him. Be the Grim Reaper.”

I jab. He tilts back and I miss. I jab again, hard. It connects. I get pretty excited.

“Yeah, just keep doing that!” I thought to myself.

I was so wrong.

Jeff lands an earth shattering kick to my chest, just above my left lung.

“Crap! I can barely frickin breathe now. I’m gonna kill him!”

I was so wrong.

He throws a few more kicks. Most I can block with my arms up in the field-goal position.

“I can just gas him like this. I’ll just keep blocking his kicks. Wait for it. Wait for it.”

Again, wrong.

He connects to my lower left ribs with a meat cleaver of a kick that still smarts, and looks like a bloody tattoo of a foot-print.

“Wow. I must be going numb, because I don’t even care at this point.”

I jab again. It rocks him a bit. I’m very happy.

Jeff is not happy. Jeff connects with a few gorgeous strikes, and I thank my lucky stars for the vasoline which has somehow eased the strength of the connection to my face as his fist slides slimily away from my cheeks.

That was when Jeff went in to get me down. At some other point earlier, Jeff’s shin had somehow grazed my cup, jacking my genitals just enough to startle me. When my eyes had gone wide, the ref stopped us bolth immediately, and I had time to think as I pondered my junk, which was actually not in that bad of shape. It was a fluke. I nodded to the ref.

“He just brushed’em,” I said. Which sounded more like “Shhh ju bushhem,” through my mouthpeice.

But in that short time, a thought occured to me, which I had contemplated a bit earlier amongst others.

“I hope he tries to take me down, and he puts his head right where I can land him a punch on the button.”

I was right about him trying to take me down, but it was awkward. He moved to my right, if I recall correctly, and I knocked him somewhere on the side of his head. He gave up on taking me down, I lost sight of him, and then…