Mixed drinks and mixed metaphors. I know them well.
Mixed martial arts? Not so much.
So with mixed emotions I attended a show put on by a Denver-based promoter of mixed martial arts, American Championship Fighting. Dubbed “Exodus,” the event promised a lineup of eight pro fights, preceded by a full amateur undercard.
What’s mixed martial arts? I’ll get to that. It won’t take nearly as long as it did for me to find my seat Saturday night at the Denver Coliseum.
The first thing that struck me upon entering Exodus was the six-drink minimum. No, there was no advance charge for cocktails, like you might find at the door of a comedy club. Rather it seemed most of the crowd saw fit to knock back a minimum of six drinks before walking through the door.
As I earlier noted, it took me a while to find my way to the press area. A dozen-plus staffers handled my inquiries like a hot potato. One staffer, I must add, was kind enough to prevent me from becoming a French fry, prying me from the pyrotechnics platform mere moments before one of many bombastic introductions.
Surviving countless run-ins, wrong turns, dead ends and jet engines turned on their sides, I at long last found a seat at ringside. The ring — or “ocho,” in the parlance of mixed martial arts — is a chain-link fence with eight sides approximately 7-feet tall. It was at the apron of the ocho where I collected myself as the evening’s answer to Michael “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble” Buffer — tux, vox and all — completed his introduction, exited the ocho and wearily approached yours truly.
I broke the silence: “I’m in your seat, aren’t I?”
The MC took pity on me in what, I soon learned, was shaping up to be a pity party.
The MC soon informed me: “Kerr pulled out with a broken hand.”
Mark Kerr was the only thing I did know coming into this cross-section of Hulk Hogan and The Karate Kid, and he was the only reason I came. He was only the main event.
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“The One, the Only, the Original” Mark Kerr was slated to fight Wes Simms for the first-ever ACF heavyweight championship. “Fight card subject to change” read the fine print, however. So in the way of damage control, it was announced that anyone who’d purchased cage-side seats would receive 50 percent off tickets to the ACF’s show July 15. Any other ticket holder would receive a 20 percent discount.
No Kerr? No problem, I thought. I couldn’t pick him out a crowd anyway. I resolved myself to learn a thing or two about this contact sport called mixed martial arts.
After sitting through two bouts, I determined that the sport contests two guys wearing nothing but shorts, a mouthpiece and reinforced cycling gloves. They square off in the ocho — under the watchful eye of a referee — and proceed to beat on each other. In fact, a beer-soaked, bloodthirsty “Beat on him!” was a common refrain from the crowd of roughly 2,000.
In these first two bouts, lasting a combined total of two minutes and two seconds, I witnessed some feigned punches, contemplated kicks and the inevitable takedown, whereupon the two kickboxers turned grapplers until somebody cried “uncle” under a flurry of pops to the ribs and elbows to the noggin. Both fights ended in the first round.
Cue the tux:
The winner at 28 seconds in the first round by submission due to elbow strikes …
Like the first two fights, the next two ended in the first round without incident, unless you consider giving lip to a nervous scribe an “incident.” After losing to University of Nebraska-Omaha assistant wrestling coach Jason Brilz, former professional bull rider Rob Wince threw something in disgust while exiting the ocho. Until I reached for my briefcase, I hadn’t realized exactly what he’d thrown. It was his mouthpiece. Before I could calculate what the green and gooey item might fetch on eBay, one of Wince’s handlers retrieved it.
The revamped main event pitted ACF welterweight champion John “The Annihilator” Cronk in a non-title bout against Ben Call, who looked every bit the anti-Annihilator. Call agreed to the fight on two days’ notice when Cronk’s original opponent dropped out due to injury. I anticipated yet another quick fight. Instead, I watched Rocky VI.
Cronk and Call landed punches, threw nimble kicks and spun out of each other’s grasp for three three-minute rounds of scintillating action that delighted the previously crestfallen crowd. When Call, clearly the underdog, dropped Cronk with a punch in the second round, the roar from the seats was deafening. By the end of Round 3, the mixed martial artists had dotted the canvas with their blood — pointillist pugilists, so to speak. The fans roared their approval as the decision between David and Goliath went to the judges.
The Annihilator was awarded the win by split decision, eliciting some boos from the crowd as well as my skepticism. Had the main event been too good to be true?
My doubts evaporated once I overheard a staffer as he peered from the gate of the ocho.
“Both fighters want to see the Doc,” he said.
As I walked back to my car, my impressions of this sport — a mixed bag of boxing, karate and wrestling — were, in a word, mixed. I imagined needing many a mint julep before gilding this shrinking violence.
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| Courtesy / ACF |
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John “The Annihilator” Cronk, left, and Ben Call duke it out in a competition of mixed martial arts, presented by Denver-based American Championship Fighting, at the Denver Coliseum on Saturday night. Despite being knocked down by a punch in the second of three three-minute rounds, Cronk rallied to prevail by split decision. |
An online exclusive that runs each Friday, examines the memorable, less visible and lighthearted aspects of Colorado’s sports landscape. DenverPost.com sports producer Bryan Boyle can be reached at bboyle@denverpost.com.
From the columns
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From the mailbags
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From the message boards
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From the online exclusives
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A look back
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| Post / John Leyba |
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FIVE YEARS AGO: In this photo shot May 12, 2001, Avalanche captain Joe Sakic, No. 19, is congratulated by his teammates after scoring the franchise’s first penalty shot in the playoffs. Sakic beat Blues goalie Roman Turek in the second period to take a 2-1 lead en route to a 4-1 victory over the St. Louis Blues in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals. The coach for St. Louis at the time? That would be current Avs coach Joel Quenneville. |
