That's gotta hurt.

Only one fight went to decision, and it was still an exciting fight. The ladies’ matches were also far more exciting than some of the female bouts I’ve seen on TV, but one ended in a disqualification and the other ended when the corner man threw in the towel. The majority of matches ended in submissions, but there were a few ref stoppages, a doctor stoppage, and a couple knockouts. The doctor stoppage came after the first round ended: the bell rang, the fighter went to his corner, then just fell over. The docs took a look at him and it was declared a knockout. In the other scary knockout, one fighter got choked unconscious and the ref apparently didn’t notice it in time. It was a good minute or so before he showed any signs of stirring, and you could just feel the crowd holding its collective breath until the docs helped the fighter to his feet.

The sound system at the event center sucked, but we had a good time picking apart the entrance music for some of the fighters. One, for example, entered to Drowning Pool’s “Bodies”:

Effective, sure, but predictable and more than a little cliché. Then you had some rap and hip hop, but their deep bass was lost in the muddy speakers and crummy acoustics of the hall. There were two odd choices, too: “Learning to Fly” and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. We heard those opening chords and laughed our asses off.

Don’t get me wrong, theyr’e not terrible songs, I just can’t imagine anyone getting pumped up and ready to fight while listening to either of those tracks. I’ll grant the one fighter probably was going for the pot reference, but the other? No idea. We decided he deserved to get beaten down for coming out to a weak song.

He promptly shut us up by knocking the shit out of his opponent. Three strong right hands and his opponent was down, and not long after that it was all over. Given that performance, he can enter to frickin’ “Fruit Salad” for all I care.

In any case, I can’t wait ’til the event comes back next year. With luck the guys from the dojo will get more VIP tickets next time around so I’ll be right off the canvas.