Event Title: Total Fight Challenge 11
Event Date: 09 February 2008
Event Venue: Hammond Civic Center
Event Location: Hammond
Date submitted: 13 February 2008
Submitted by: Dan Dougherty
To say that Total Fight Challenge 11 was anything less than a success would be a gross understatement. On Feb. 9, 2008, in at the Hammond Civic Center, 32 mixed martial artists threw down in one of the most entertaining combat sports events in the Midwest. Like something out of a B-rated action movie, the night was full of non-stop, emotion fueled action, and believe it or not, a tad bit of heartbreak on the side.
To start the night off, the first two bouts ended in the very first round, both by triangle chokes that seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere. The action was hard pressed by all of the fighters to open the event, until the sixth bout, between Dan New and Phonsamay Attanaphone. Perhaps the correct wording should be between Dan New and thin air, due to the fact that the "Evil Little Asian Dude" was evil enough to be introduced (in person) at the beginning of the event, but not come out for his actual fight. Dan New won by disqualification (no-show).
With the crowd being a bit restless and disappointed from the last fight, the next two fighters were under the gun to deliver an exciting comeback; and when Laquinn Swift and Mike Cannon went to war, it was an absolute [bad] blood bath. Cannon came out with a huge slam and was dominating Swift for the bulk of the bout until he accidentally kneed Swift in the head on the ground. The ref was quick to catch this and stand them up, but apparently, Swift wouldn’t have it. He attacked Cannon during the stand-up, which opened up the gateway for chaos. The fight was ruled no-contest.
Normally, I wouldn’t write about such actions, but I feel it is necessary to bring the point across that MMA is a very emotion fueled sport. There comes a level of professionalism, however, that every fighter must maintain even under circumstances that seem unfair. This was obviously something Swift was not able to do, and it put a scar on MMA’s growing popularity.
Moving on to the later bouts of the night, Dan Bolden and Anthony Gomez went to war. The stand-up game was clearly being won by Bolden throughout the fight, as Gomez was taking a lot of shots that didn’t seem to affect his iron jaw. Contrarily, when the fight went to the ground, Bolden was in a world of hurt. Gomez had a tight, solid jiu-jitsu game and refused to let him up for any air. At one point, it looked as though Bolden’s arm was going to be turned backwards when he refused to tap to an Americana attempt, but the bell at the end of the round saved him.
Unfortunately for Bolden, his luck was too little, too late, as Gomez took his back in the last round and unleashed a barrage of ground and pound action to force the referee to end the fight at 2:00 in round two.
The next fight of the night, between Quinton McCottrell and Juan Magana was one of the few fights that went the distance. In summary, the fight could be described in three terms; clinch, takedown, ref stand-up. The stand-up game was weak on Cottrell’s side, as he didn’t land a single shot on Magana. Most of his points were scored by takedowns, where he did hardly anything damaging on the ground and barely made any attempts to pass Magana’s guard. Magana pressed most of the action on his feet, and ended up taking the bout by unanimous decision.
DeRay Johnson and Charles Wilson were the next two warriors to be thrown into the ring, and Wilson put on a highly entertaining standup show. It’s few and far between that you see a fighter like Wilson, who is very liberal in throwing high axe-kicks and relatively “flashy” moves. It was clear that he wanted to keep the fight on his feet, but Johnson wouldn’t have it as he took Wilson down several times, and even scored one of the biggest slams of the night. It would seem as though Johnson had a tighter ground game than Wilson, but that theory was disproved in the second round when Wilson mounted Johnson after a takedown of his own, and eventually arm barred him for the win at 4:23 of round two.
Alas, we move on to our main event of the evening between Jason Tabor, and former World Extreme Cagefighting titleholder Eddie Wineland for the Total Fight Challenge 135-pound title. Tabor, who was clearly a wrestling-based fighter, was having one hell of a time dealing with Wineland’s inhumanly crisp stand-up game. Tabor scored a fast takedown in the first round, but it was a futile effort, as Wineland met nearly every attempt after that with a vicious sprawl. Tabor spent the bulk of the rest of the fight eating shot after shot from Wineland that eventually led to his knock out by means of a straight right hand at 4:42 of round two for the TFC title.
Over all, even with a few bumps along the road, the event was a success. It was an allegorical paraphrasing of MMA’s present life-span showing strategy in combat, a bit of controversy, but when it comes down to it, just some good old fashioned beat-downs.
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