The following is another guest post from Jimmy Dean Hoffa.
CFFC 75 – which is like the UFC but with different letters and lower numbers after the name – was at Spotlight 29 Casino on Saturday, May 26th for what I hope is the first of many events to come.
Cage Fury Fighting Championship, despite having a dumb name (was Cage Fighting Championship AND Fury Fighting Championship already taken?) is everything you want when you see any sporting event live in person. You could watch on UFC Fight Pass as it does seem to be a bit of a feeder system for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (See Danger Granger below) but why miss out on the opportunity to see, hear, smell and feel everything you miss on live TV?
Behind every cameraman hunches a woman to hold his cables. You don’t see that on TV! I hope CFFC* covers chiropractic.
*Not to harp on their name again, but Cage Fury sounds like some outrun aesthetic Nic Cage movie about vengeance and a Corvette. I would love the opportunity to attend another event of theirs but really don’t want to tell people the name when I go, nah’mean?
Danger Granger. This BAMF won the main event via submission in just 42 seconds AND afterward found out UFC President Dana White extended her an invite to appear on his show. She is the future and it’s only at events like these can you see the up-and-comers alongside all the unique and marvelous trappings that accompany live mixed martial arts.
Here are some of the finer details you might miss in a live broadcast.
- Men wearing slides. It must be some MMA training thing as every fighter has someone walking behind them wearing slides. This is something important I think you all should know which is why it put it first. You can stop reading now, so long as you know there are men who could kill you with bare hands walking around in slides all night.
- Instructions from cornermen. While you miss out on the blow-by-blow from TV announcers, things you hear cornermen say are incredible. I heard “You have legs too!” (LOL) and “Elbow him in the brain!” (OMG) to give a small sampling of the type of sage advice these guys are screaming out to their fighters.
- Great beards. I mean REALLY great beards.
- Great haircuts to accompany great beards. Handsome Thor-like men everywhere with massive beards and tight undercuts.
- Awful haircuts. All shapes and varieties of bad haircuts but my favorite was tight to the scalp receding hairline flowing into a bushy afro mullet. Just a work of art.
- The families and friends of those in the ring. It’s hard not to root for someone when you’re next to their pregnant girlfriend – or it is hard to root against them. No one wants to catch side-eye from a woman 7-months pregnant whose man is in the ring risking brain damage just because you don’t think he’s got good ground technique. You don’t know how many cousins she may have scattered throughout the arena, nah’mean?
- Sponsors. The UFC is all Reebok on the shorts now and gone are the days of multiple logos covering a fighter from crotch to anus – BUT NOT AT CFFC. All the larger to smaller sponsors are there – from Virus (which I assume is an organization in support of the Anti-Vaxxer movement) to everyone’s favorite app for finding the sticky icky.
Anybody else hungry for one of the best restaurants in the country according to Yelp? It’s because this guy has TKB on his trunks.
Advertising works.
- Good tattoos. Some of these guys have some serious ink and aren’t afraid to pay for quality. If you can appreciate the art form, a fight is a great way to view some stellar work.
- Bad tattoos. It seems obvious but worth noting.
- ATBGE Tattoos. Far be it from me to judge someone for being proud about where they workout – but for someone other than Cub Swanson to have a Cub Swanson tat because they train at TRU MMA gave me nausea. It would be like going to a work related pool party and seeing Bob from Accounting reveal an Orange Theory chest piece before he dove into the water.
- Dad shirts. As far as the eyes can see there is a sea of dad shirts surrounding the cage – with palm trees, flamingos, pot leaves and cars. Dad shirts at these events are like the Aloha shirts at Costco – they are everywhere and seem like mandatory attire.
- The music and walk out songs. We all love to judge someone’s musical taste, but it’s only at a fight you can hope someone gets hurt because they made you listen to 30 seconds of Slipknot.
- Hanging with fighters. You can very likely hang out with these warriors when they are outside the cage and with far less fury at the bar inside the casino afterward. People who escaped death or nearly delivered death tend to have a great time and I highly recommend hanging with a fighter if you have the chance.
The night was amazing. The turnout seemed decent. This town needs more live sports of any and all calibre. Spotlight 29, if you have another CFFC I will be there and if we all start going to more events like these, we’ll start to see more and bigger/better ones that we all want to attend – cuz fuck golf and tennis, nah’mean?
