Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

A face-smashing good time

Local cage fighting enthusiasts get their dose of action

Popularized by pay-per-view fights on cable and satellite television, and banned in several states because of its brutality, cage fighting is legal in Kansas, where sanctioned fights are governed by Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts. They prohibit head butting, eye gouging, “placing a finger in any opponent’s orifice,” and “groin attacks of any kind.”

By Brian Lewis-Jones

Wednesday, October 24th, 2007

Jon Teel looks like a loser halfway through his debut cage fight, blood dripping from a gash near his left eye. His opponent, Bob Sweet, has elbowed the Stillwell sophomore’s eye socket, hammered his face with punches and slammed his head into the mat, bruising his forehead and leaving it pocked with blood blisters.

A fan screams: “Hit him! Hit him!”

But Teel, a 19-year-old with a Mohawk hairdo, salvaged victory at Lawrence’s first-ever cage fight card when he used a wrestling move called a guillotine choke to lock both of his arms around Sweet’s neck, threatening suffocation and forcing his opponent to “tap out,” the cage fight equivalent of boxing’s throwing in the towel.

Despite the pummeling he endured to win his fight, Teel remains among a growing number of enthusiasts of cage fighting, also known as mixed martial arts, a sport that borrows techniques from boxing and various martial arts from Muay Thai Kickboxing to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Popularized by pay-per-view fights on cable and satellite television, and banned in several states because of its brutality, cage fighting is legal in Kansas, where sanctioned fights are governed by Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts. They prohibit head butting, eye gouging, “placing a finger in any opponent’s orifice,” and “groin attacks of any kind.”

As fans learned watching Teel’s September fight, those liberal rules still allow fighters to kick opponents in the face, pick them up and slam their heads into the mat, repeatedly hit them after they are down, and place them in arm- and leg-locks that can actually break limbs or prevent breathing. Some doctors say cage fighting is a sport so violent that even watching it can be dangerous. Not so, say local combatants who say it improves discipline, heightens senses, and gives them confidence in their ability to defend themselves.

During the Lawrence’s inaugural fight at Coyote’s Night Club, Douglas County Fire and Medical kept an ambulance outside in case of emergency. The audience included an eclectic subculture of aging bikers, men with Mohawks and Fu Manchu moustaches, bearded men with Tie-die shirts and KU cage fighters and fans, some of whom recorded fights with cell phone cameras. A brightly illuminated cage with a red mat situated between two disco balls in the middle of the bar served as the battlefield. Armor for warriors like Teel consisted of a mouthpiece, a groin cup and lightly padded gloves that were the only barriers between fist and face.

Train to stay alive

Teel, whose cut eyebrow required five stitches, admitted he didn’t look like a winner walking around campus after the fight. “People must have thought I was hit by a car,” he said. His parents were especially unhappy to see his battered face, he said.

Unlike boxing, long dominated by working class inner-city blacks and immigrants with seldom more than a high school education, cage fighting is attracting fans and fighters who learned their sport in martial arts classes taught in suburban strip malls. Teel was one of three KU students who stepped into the cage in Lawrence’s first fight card.

After training for one year at Integrated Martial Science, his mixed martial arts school, Teel fought his first match in Lawrence. Originally, Teel’s dad urged him to take self-defense classes, which quickly turned into learning mixed martial arts, or MMA.

“I did all of the regular sports,” he said. “MMA is a completely different world.”

He said MMA improved overall athleticism, flexibility and self-defense. Teel taught a self-defense class last spring and planned to teach a cardio-kickboxing class for women at the school in the near future. He aspires to own a gym of his own.

One of Teel’s coaches is Robert Riley, is real-life Clark Kent and Superman. A KU journalism graduate, Riley is a mild-mannered, glasses-wearing reporter for the Lawrence Journal-World by day. By night, he teaches Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at Integrated Martial Science, coaches cage fighters and has entered into the cage himself.

Riley said a cage fighter could defeat an opponent by subduing him with a submission hold, battering an opponent until he quit or the referee stopped it, or by decision of the judges after three five-minute rounds.

When his fighters get into the cage, Riley can no longer help them. “It has to be so drilled into them and so second nature. That’s what people don’t understand about fighting. You have to do it without thinking. There’s no time to think ­­­— only time to win or lose.”

Riley teaches beginning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and helps coach a small group of advanced students, including Lawrence resident Mark “The Wolverine” Sears, 24, who found himself in a pinch one minute into his first cage fight last May in Kansas City, Mo.

More than a hobby

At the Ararat Shrine Temple, Sears’ undefeated opponent Steve Cox threw him to the canvas, rained punches to his face and side, lifted him three feet into the air and crashed his head to the mat.

Some in the crowd of about 1,000 stood and cheered with gusto, while others like Sears’ family groaned at the sight of his face, pink from punches, blood dripping from his nose.

With Sears pinned against the plastic-coated chain-link cage, defenseless against Cox’s punches, the referee stopped the fight. Sears collapsed face-first to the mat as worried medics and coaches rushed into the cage through its swinging door. Sears stood up, walked to his opponent and lifted him up in acclaim of his victory.

Kansas showdowns

Sponsors at Sears’ fight ranged from aerobic coaches to senior care providers. In the middle of the Ararat Shrine Temple, a purple-matted cage illuminated by four industrial work lights framed the action. Two ring girls in black stretch short-shorts, skin-tight white shirts and tall platform boots strutted, danced and entertained in the cage between fights to metal, country and rap music. A cameraman recorded the action, some of which was later uploaded to YouTube. The referee wore clear rubber gloves to protect himself from the blood, sweat and saliva of the brawlers, who rush to batter each other at the ring of a 10-inch bronze bell.

Though his first fight ended in loss, “The Wolverine,” as fearless as his carnivorous pseudonym, would return to the cage a few weeks later to claim his first victory. Most recently, he won again as part of Lawrence’s first-ever cage fight card, which included Teel and two other KU students, Lance Windholz and Seth Anderson.

This time around, Sears rebounded from a hard kick in the face from Wes “Fire Man” Miller and quickly slammed Miller to the mat. Sears ended the fight when he put his challenger in an arm bar, a favorite submission move that hyperextends the elbow joint. The referee stopped the skirmish for fear Sears would break Miller’s arm.

Sears wrestled at Shawnee Heights High School before graduation in 2001 and decided to try cage fighting after watching the Ultimate Fighting Championship on television. While that champion won big money, amateur fighters such as Sears get no tangible compensation beyond the respect earned in the 24-square-foot octagonal cage.

“It’s not something to pursue for fame and money,” explained the bearded Sears, who stands 5’5”, weighs 145-pounds and earns his living throwing boxes on a conveyor belt at a K-Mart distribution center in Lawrence.

Sears said training and fights brought sore joints, battered knuckles, muscle bruises, bloody faces and sometimes broken bones. “Somewhere, it always hurts. You just get used to it,” Sears said.

For combat or defense

Sears trained for a year at Integrated Martial Science, a gym next to an employment agency, a parole office and a payday loans business. Owner Darryl Clark says most of his nearly 60 students are between 18 and 28 and are there both to learn self-defense and for good workouts.

The school’s Web site reads, “By taking martial arts classes, you can master natural truths about how things like your body, psychology, competition, and the world around you operate. By the process of science (not by faith or tradition), each concept can be tested to prove its effectiveness.”

Clark’s specialty entails putting all of the gym’s fighting styles together and filling in the gaps. He started as a high school wrestler with his father as coach. Since then, he says he’s been in 39 unsanctioned fights in an Illinois underground fighting club called “Get Down and Dirty.” The club involves no money, no referees, no officials and is a real-life version of the book and movie Fight Club – just friends beating each other up for fun, he said. “My ambition was to see what worked and what doesn’t,” he said. “I found out real quick.”

Clark’s gym is one of several here that train would-be cage fighters. Others include Dwane Lewis Martial Arts Academy, the Lawrence Grappling Club, Crawford’s Mixed Martial Arts, and Walt’s Boxing.

Lance Windholz, 20, Louisburg junior, trained with the Louisburg group Suicide Mill before moving to Lawrence. He doesn’t belong to a gym today; instead, he trains and spars with friends at the University of Kansas’ Student Recreation Fitness Center.

Without a coach, without a defeat

A lanky 6’3”, Windholz has won his two amateur cage fights. He won his debut in Kansas City by choking his opponent with his legs, called a “triangle choke.” Most recently, he defeated Seth Anderson, another KU student, in Lawrence’s first fight card. Windholz took Anderson to the mat and began throwing a flurry of punches to his face when the referee stopped the match. Windholz escaped both of his fights relatively unharmed, he said, with a black eye and sore nose his only injuries.

“I’m sure there’s going to be a time when I get punched back hard,” said Windholz, who has trained in Judo and Tae Kwon Do. “But if you play any sport and you’re afraid of injury, you’re never going to be successful.”

Regulate the beating

One of the three judges at Sears’ first fight in Kansas City was Brian Holmes, a muscular, middle-aged man with a goatee on his chin, wearing a black Under Armour shirt and carpenter jeans. The Leavenworth resident regularly judges cage fights.

Fights aren’t typically long blood baths but instead are over in a flash, said Holmes, whose personal fight experience stretches from wrestling to Tae Kwon Do. Now, he says he’s too old to fight, so he judges matches and gets “the best seat in the house.”

Holmes, whose day job is being a Lake Quivira police officer, said cage fighting “is a sport where violence is involved, but it’s not a street fight.” Holmes said the referee was constantly involved and could halt the fight whenever a fighter risked serious injury.

The potential for injuries doesn’t faze Sears, whose body already bears the evidence of past battles: cauliflower ears formed by swollen cartilage and a scar below his mouth where his own tooth pierced the flesh.

Gena Bezingue, an employee of American Medical Response and one of two emergency medical technicians working Sears’ fight, said her services weren’t needed unless fighters were seriously hurt.

“I don’t like it when they drop them on their heads,” Bezingue said. All fighters probably suffer from head injuries but leave them untreated, she noted.

“These are tough guys. They don’t want to be babied,” she said.

Head injuries like the concussions Bezingue worries about are common in a sport where fighters endure multiple blows to the cranium. One doctor at the University of Kansas Hospital said MMA fights can “have some serious consequences.”

Caution: may cause injury

Michael Moncure, associate professor of surgery at the University of Kansas Medical Center and director of trauma at the Hospital, said repeated trauma to the brain can scatter a person’s concentration and give them anger and behavioral issues. Head trauma injuries like minor concussions or head bleeds can add up to major health issues over the years, he said.

“If someone were to have a concussion before they fully recover and be subject to an additional severe concussion, or worse, a bleed to the brain, it’s life-threatening,” he said.

So far, only one MMA fighter has met his death during a match. It happened in 1998 during a match in Ukraine where American fighter Douglas Dedge took multiple blows to the head from Yevgeni Zolotarev and died of severe brain injuries.

Another MMA fighter, a KU student named Matthew Jaeger, was charged last week with severely beating his ex-girlfriend, who was still hospitalized after having undergone two undisclosed surgeries. The clerk of the Douglas County District Court stated that Jaeger’s bond was set at $850,000.

Press accounts of what was described as a savage beating that inflicted horrific injuries focused on Jaeger’s training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which Riley, who teaches it, said was unfair and misleading. “It’s a shame that it was even involved in the news story. I just don’t see the connection,” said Riley, who explained that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was for self-improvement and self-defense rather than aggression toward others.

Exposure to bone-crushing, concussion-causing cage fights has both popularized the sport and energized critics who find harm in just watching it. Viewing such violent programs could lead to aggressive behavior, the Federal Communications Commission suggested earlier this year.

In its report on violence in the media, the FCC found that “there is deep concern among many American parents and health professionals regarding harm from viewing violence in media. We also agree with the views of the Surgeon General that there is strong evidence that exposure to violence in the media can increase aggressive behavior in children, at least in the short term.”

Kids soak up the violence

Eric Vernberg, professor in the clinical child psychology program at the University of Kansas, warns that children can become frightened or angry when they view graphic violence in the media, including Ultimate Fighting Championships on cable channels like the Spike network.

Vernberg, who researched how children with violent histories can become provoked when they view violence in the media, said programs that glamorize extreme violence could provide a model for aggressive behavior and show how a dominant person can control somebody else.

“It’s not going to make everybody who watches it violent,” he said. “Most people won’t go and beat someone up. If you have someone who is violent in the first place, it can get them rolling in that direction.”

Blood isn’t a necessity

Nate Mass, Leawood senior, is one fan who regularly watches violent cage fights on television, YouTube or downloaded to a computer. His computer hard drive is nearly half full of MMA videos.

Mass called cage fighters modern-day gladiators and their bloody sport an outlet from which to vent rage.

He’s picky about which fights he watches. He doesn’t like the bloody mayhem of the Ultimate Fighting Championship but prefers a fight with strategy such as Pride Fighting Championship, a Japan-based MMA league.

“I don’t really like it when it’s bloody,” Mass said. “After a few rounds, some UFC guys look like bloated raccoons.”

Mass and other local MMA fans had their first chance to attend a live cage fight in Lawrence at Coyote’s in September. Cowboy murals lined the wall, their orange, green and yellow paint illuminated by black lights. The sell-out crowd of about 1,000 formed a line a football field in length to buy tickets that cost at least $20 each.

Mark “The Wolverine” Sears, one of the winners that evening, insisted that cage fight fans weren’t there to see rage, hysterical ferocity or blood. The three five-minute rounds are a respectful violence, he explained, “a really intense game that involves getting kicked in the face.”

—Edited by Trevan McGee

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