Fast forward from that young, naïve 18 year old to the
awesome and wise 27 years old that lives on a ramen diet before you. I accepted
a fight against a fighter from Asheville, NC named Johnny Buck. NaiveManager
told me they wanted to do the fight at a catch weight of 175lbs and that he had
been fighting at Middleweight (185lbs). I asked why he couldn’t do 170lbs and
he told me that he was close my size while having never fought at 170lbs and it
would be a hard cut for his first time. Being stupid, like I was for the whole
preparation for this fight, I agreed to give him 5 pounds and basically give
Buck the fight right there, I just didn’t know it yet.
I spent 5 weeks preparing for the fight, which I thought at
the time would be enough to prepare for a one-dimensional wrestler that I had a
3 inch reach advantage on. I was about as dead on about this as a trailer park
whore is about who the father is on Maury Povich. Papa Frank wasn’t happy about
me taking the fight, because RedneckPromoter didn’t get me the fight which for
me seemed like a big plus. One of the
reasons why I took the fight was due to the fact that I wouldn’t have to deal
with RedneckPromoter trying to tell me how to prepare for a fight. The only
fights he had to prepare for were fighting off inmates in Leeds Hotel that
wanted to turn him into their bitch, even though I think heterosexual convicts
would still have some standards in which guys’ brown eye they planned on
ramming. Also the fact that the fight
was going to be aired on Comcast Sports South and for a championship belt was
the cincher. I saw it as the quickest way to get my name out to bigger
promotions like the UFC and Strikeforce.
I wanted to get my name out because I wanted to escape the
high school drama that is the Charleston mixed martial arts scene. I didn’t
want shady promoters that jerk off to pictures of Don King ruling my life, and
I wasn’t afraid to tell them where to stick it. I thought I could fight them
and do things my own way. Well the fight world and most promoters are a lot
like quick sand, the more you fight them the more you are likely to sink. A lot
of fighters don’t realize this because:
A. They allow their
ego to get in the way of their logic (what I did)
B. They are just
plain dumb (60% of the time)
C. They are just
as shady as the promoters
I soon found out that it’s possible to have not only a town
but an entire state’s sanctioning body that could be all THREE.
I would learn this lesson the hard way and it is basically
the catalyst for why I’ve chosen to walk away from the fight game indefinitely.
The following starts from the night that we arrived in Asheville.
I arrived in Asheville the night before weigh-ins with Boze
and we got situated at the Brookstone Lodge which is the hotel Michael Allen
and Scott Crosby was reserving for all of the fighters. Since I had only been
eating rice cakes and drinking water for the week we decided on going somewhere
that could keep my mind occupied. What kind of establishment could keep my mind
off of food after having already starved myself for a week? We arrived at the
strip club, walked in, paid the cover, and took a seat at a table by the stage.
That’s when I saw BlairWitch. She looked like what I would imagine if the kid
from The Exorcist got molested, developed serious daddy issues, ended up being
repossessed by the same demon, developed a great ass, and a chain smoking
habit. She came walking up to us out of the dressing room with an outfit that
could have be seen in a Rob Zombie
video. She sat next to me. I tried to avoid eye contact out of fear of her pulling
a Medusa and turning me into stone. I looked over at Boze and saw something him
that I never thought I would see out of him, FEAR.
In addition to being an expert in Muay Thai as well as
having competed in in numerous K-1 rules bouts, Boze was also a former police
officer. He worked on the Jump/Narcotics/Swat teams for the City of Charleston
Police department. Ever watch those cop movies where the cops go busting into a
drug dealers house and bust the king pin’s head open with a baton? That was
Boze’s 9-5. Yet here he is scared of a 5’11 (including her hair) stripper that
looked like she beat her batter to Marylin Manson. It was pretty fucking
hilarious and I did the only thing that seemed logical while simultaneously
making it funnier to myself. I hooked James into the conversation with BlairWitch
that had already gotten into voodoo. Also keep in mind that I had only said
about 5 words to her. James reluctantly turned around as I started looking for
escape routes in case she wanted to pull a Paranormal Activity and break my
neck to start a blood orguy oe somwthing. Somehow she eventually grabbed my
attention and I started to search my soul infer if I was had been a decent
enough Catholic for purgatory at least. She informed me that she liked to
mesmerize dudes with her eyes. I wanted to inform that the best way to
mesmerize guys is with her mouth during fellatio. I also realized that this is
how she might reposes souls. She eventually get a dollar out of me, but she got
said dollar because:
1. I saw
Paranormal Activity 2 and Legion (fucking scary shit)
2. She had a
great ass (If I were drunk enough if would have brown bagged her to the tunes
of Static-X)
We left the club shortly after and headed back to hotel
where I passed out dreaming about food while clutching my pillow like it was a
fuzzy wuzzy teddy bear that would keep me safe at night from demonic strippers.
The following morning we woke up and I was ready to get to a
sauna to get down to 175 and get the weigh-ins over with. We found a gym that
had a sauna while noticing that Asheville looked like it was built forest
gnomes that advertised McDonalds very well judging from the average physique of
the towns folk. We got to the gym and I checked my weight.
181lbs…….DAMN, good thing this was at 175lbs instead of
170lbs or this weight cut might have been a problem.
The cut was relatively easy and I made 175 in about an hour
and a half. A few hours later we were back at the Brookstone Lodge for the
official weigh-ins. I was getting pissed off, because Buck still isn’t on
weight and the NC Boxing Authority officials were inexplicably giving him more
time to cut the weight and allowed him to keep running around the hotel in a
sauna suit. His teamalso informed me of that fact so I just waited and got more
irritable by the second as well as more narcissistic much to Cain’s (who was
also fighting too) and ThaiGuy’s amusement. Buck walked in and stripped down to
his birthday suit (with no head’s up or someone saying, ‘Fire in the hole”).
Oddly Boze, Cain, Walker, and myself are the only ones that found this odd. I
guess grown men in Asheville aren’t bothered by looking at another grown man’s
cock. It would explain a lot actually. Buck was still at 176lbs. I was having
more balls than brains at this point so this was my answer to the North
Carolina Boxing Authority representative about still accepting the fight:
Frank: “Fuck it, let’s do it.”
At the time Buck looked smaller than me and I figured that I
had this fight in the bag (again). As I chugged my Acai juice (try it,
seriously) and started putting weight back on I noticed Buck doing the same
with a full tray of manicotti that he started devouring like it was a candy
bar. I was amazed at how fast he could throw down all that bleached white flour
considering if I were doing the same thing after weighing-in my stomach would
have been on the verge of exploding. That should have been red flag number 2.
He was seriously sucking down manicotti faster than a shop-vac can suck a fetus
out of a sorostitute’s uterus. I thought could see him growing bigger by the
minute, but I just chalked it up to my usual paranoia and anxiety that I would
experience before fight time. Being nervous before a fight is normal, anyone
that says the contrary is lying unless you’re Chuck Liddell (because he would
fuck random bitches on fight day which is a great strategy by the way) or 187
because fighting for him is like going to Disneyland for anybody else. Also the
promoter for the fight and owner of Blackeye Entertainment, Michael Allen, was
there. He was also Johnny Buck’s manager which is pretty funny since illegal
which he could be overheard admitting to with the NC Boxing Authority Officials
within earshot of it. It’s the same reason why Dana White couldn’t manage Chuck
Liddell and Tito Ortiz after him and the Fertittas bought out the UFC. This
should have been red flag number 3.
After the weigh-ins finished I piled into the limo along
with the rest of the fighters that weren’t representing the “great city” of
Asheville. We headed to the mock weigh-ins which is basically the weigh-ins for
the public but don’t actually count, because if they did everyone would over
weight due rehydrating and eating like a normal human being. When we arrived I
noticed that RedNeckPromoter was at one of the T-Shirt tables trying to push
some of his new T-shirts in another desperate attempt at getting rich off of
trying to be the cracker version of Don King. The funny thing is he spent a
couple years trying to talk me into letting him manage me, but since he had the
moral compass of Snooki in an abortion clinic, I was letting my dad manage me
instead, because he had MY best interests in mind. In hindsight if I had him
managing me for the is fight I’d probably still be fighting and this fight
would have never happened. All we had to
do was step on a scale and the announcer would read out what our weight was at
the official weigh-ins. I took a seat and as Rashad Evans (yea, the UFC
fighter) made a whole speech about how great Asheville was (he was obviously
getting paid a lot to do that by the way).
He talked about how he got started in fighting and I already knew the
whole story. It involved a shit load of showboating on the Ultimate Fighter in
between bouts of pissing off Matt hughes and dry humping. I was ready to get
this shit over with. Food needed to be consumed and I needed to get some rest.
After the other fighters weighed in I hit the scale and Buck
hopped on after me. He already looked bigger than a few hours prior, but still
about my size. I also found out in this time that his last fight was against
Luigi Fioravanti even though it didn’t show up on the fight finder on
mixedmartialarts.com. That was the fourth red flag and the first noticeable one
that got past my Sicilian/A.D.D. stubbornness.
We rode back to hotel and stopped at Applebee’s which had
become a ritual after weigh-ins at this point in my fight career. Unlike the
Biloxi fight I didn’t order a shit load of food. My body had the process
cutting weight down to a science at this point in my career, and since the
North Carolina Boxing Authority liked being more uptight than nun on Ash
Wednesday they decided to enforce this 13lb post weigh in cap. Basically from
whatever weight that I weighed in at I would only be allowed to add on 13 lbs
so I actually had to watch how much food I took in, but I wasn’t as hungry as I
thought I would be which made it a non issue. I was too busy over-analyzing the
fight in my head which was making me even more nervous which actually worked so
far before my fights. I figured the more nervous I was, the smarter I would
fight and it had been pretty successful.
Fight day arrived, we woke up, and drove to where the fights
were and the second weigh-ins were being held. Buck and his people were already
there, and he was still about the same size he was the night before. We both
weighed-in:
Frank: 180lbs
Buck: 188lbs
I had only put on 5 pounds while Buck had already put on
13lbs which I found kind of odd, but I just keep telling myself that it wasn’t
a big deal. After getting done with weighing in, I went back to the Dodge
Charger that we rented in Charleston, grabbed the gallon of orange juice that
was still in the car and started chugging OJ with reckless abandon. Boze tried
getting me to slow down but the OJ had me hooked like a porn star with a trust
fund. I swallowed that OJ faster than strippers swallow cum in exchange for crystal
meth. After getting done with the photo shoot for the Sportsouth broadcast of
the fight, we rode to Waffle House to do my fight day ritual of consuming pork
fat and hash browns. Once I was done with this bargain bucket feast we rode up
to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Boze spent the whole morning going on and on about how good
of an idea it would be to go meditate up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We had
some time to kill before my family arrived so we headed their and meditate
while listening to Five Finger Death Punch on the way. After driving around up
there we found a spot that seemed like it would work. I basically just sat
there with my eyes closed and tried to go through the fight in my head and the
only way I could see Buck beating me is by taking me down and dry humping me
the entire time. After coming to this realization it was time for us to head
back to the hotel since my family had already arrived. After we got back to the
hotel my family suggested going to Texas Road House. As we walked in I sensed the
path that all steak houses should take. As we walked in we saw a butcher-shop
style vendor with all different cuts of meat that were so fresh that I wouldn’t
have been surprised if cows were being lined up for a firing squad in the back
of the restaurant. We sat down and I realized that I was still backed up from
eating at Waffle House earlier that morning. I contemplated dropping some kids
off in the pool to make some room. I spent the meal going through the battle
between my bowels wanting me to relieve pressure and taste buds telling me to
dive in into the red meat paradise before me. Eventually I made a bee line to
the bathroom in order to make some room.
After that cow carcass feast we drove back to the hotel to
get some of our things so that Boze and I could hang out with my family before
we had to head to the NC AG Center for fighter meetings. When we got to the
hotel we went to Papa Frank and Mama Frank’s room and that’s when my cell phone
went off. It was HotTeacher with her impeccable timing, as impeccable as a
trailer park whore going into labor during a funeral. She called me because she
was worried that I was going to get hurt. I had to deal with her crying and
worrying about my well being before I had to go and fight somebody that was
trying to seriously fuck up my well being. A college educated woman using whore
logic, LOVELY. Just what I needed before a cage fight.
After HotTeacher’s lovely distraction, much like getting
neutered, me and Boze headed over the NC AG Center, or as we would find out
upon pulling up to it, the NORTH CAROLINA AGRICULTURAL CENTER. It was on a
FUCKING FARM. We were having a televised fight on a fucking farm that could
have been used to shoot beastiality porn. Wow, the sport had come a long way in
NORTH CAROLINA (possibly most sarcastic thing I have ever said). We waited
around with all the other fighters before we realized Buck hasn’t shown up yet.
We walked around looking for the promoter. We found RedNeckPromoter who
happened to be selling Johnny Buck T-shirts, which didn’t surprise me in the
least. RedneckPromoter went after money faster than a Rabbi that was behind on
his rent. That’s when I started to realize I was being thrown to the wolves. We
found Michael Allen who told us that Buck was still at his house and didn’t’t
have to be there till 7pm. Now things were starting to get really sketchy. We
arrived at 5pm for pre fight physicals and didn’t have to be there until 7pm,
weren’t told this ahead of time, but all the other fighters had to be there at
5pm. I know hometown fighters are naturally going to have some bias treatment
but this was starting to be a little much. The promotion was going out of it’s
way to make Buck feel at home, in his hometown. I wasn’t from the “great city”
of Asheville but I kind of got the feeling of how the town operated and it was
definitely based on the good ole boy system.
The good-ole-boy system is basically a southern term for
politics. The main concept is from the “I scratch your back, you scratch my
back” mentality. It’s a popularity contest basically, much like high school.
And in Asheville Johnny Buck was basically Fonzi, except with a tramp stamp. He
was basically being treated like the slack-jawed hillbilly yokel folk hero that
he looked like while I was being served up as the Natural Light or whatever
other shitty piss water beer that jerk offs in towns like Asheville consume.
Things just kept going downhill from there once we got back
to the Farm/Fight Venue at 7pm. As I was backstage warming up, the North
Carolina Boxing Authority officials were watching me like a hawk and I
basically had to ask permission to go take a piss or risk getting suspended.
Buck on the other hand wasn’t given the same treatment. He was given the exact
opposite treatment actually. He was allowed to go anywhere he wanted to and it
seemed like the commission officials were as interested as watching him as they
were for getting their fat redneck asses on a treadmill.
I decided that I was going to take it all out on Buck during
the fight. I started thinking about Bushido (“way of the warrior”) and
everything I read about in the Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Mushashi. The
only thing I could do was keep telling myself “he is going to have to kill me
to stop me.” Little did I know how close I was about to come to proving that
point. I always admired the Samurai after watching The Last Samurai with Ken
Watanabe (Watanabe made that movie, Cruise was just along for the ride)
especial was about living and dying with honor. This mentality is honestly what
lead me to fighting and carried me through all of my fights up to this point,
but I never honestly thought I would actually push it to the limit before
cancer or some “secret-STD-that-can-penetrate-double-wrapping” sent me for a meeting with my maker. And THEN
my name was called. My fight was up and I heard “Time is on the Side” blasting
on the loudspeakers instead of “Sandstorm” by Darude which was supposed to be
my walkout song playing. Apparently NaiveManager never informed “Cornbread”
(aka Michael Allen) of my change in song choice, or even show up to Asheville
to do this whole managing thing that he was suppose to do (his excuse is
because his son had a recital) even thought I was training his other son for
free.
I made my way down to the cage; I had never felt so alone in
my life. I was surrounded by the rabid-drunk off natty light-locals of the “great
city” of Asheville, North Carolina. It was like that scene in Return of the
Jedi where Luke Skywalker was being walked to the pit by Jabba the Hutt’s goons
to be fed to the monster that moved like it had stage 4 arthritis. Replace the
Monster with Johnny Buck and the goons with audience who were spinning their
towels in a similar manner of Pittsburg Fans whenever they see Troy Palamalu
show up in a hair commercial or when Ben Roethlisberger beats a rape
accusation.
After I walked into the cage I saw Rashad Evans at the
announcer’s booth and we caught eyes. As this eyeing session was going on
Johnny Buck started walking to the cage and the towel twirling grew to a
frenzied (and retarded) pace. They worshipped a guy that looked like Johnny
Drama from Entourage but with Down syndrome. And then he walked into the cage
and we weren’t exactly the same size anymore. From the looks of him he had put
on 30lbs since the weigh-ins. The problem with that was I had only put on about
10 lbs. Now it all made since why his management made such a big deal about not
fighting at 170. Judging from how much he grew by fight time he’d have an
easier time resisting the urge of pounding his cousin’s g-spot than getting
down to 170. It was evident to me at that moment; this whole fight was A SET
UP.
Me and Rashad did the ghetto hood nod at each other and then
I heard the ref asking if was ready. I just realized that times like this are
what separate the men from the pussies. I was being fed to the wolves in
hostile territory by a shady promoter that was only interested in lining his
own pockets and not the safety of the fighters. He picked a guy that he thought
his fighter would run right through and look good in his hometown. This fight
was suppose to be Johnny Buck’s homecoming party. And I was the barely 4A
school that was suppose to get railroaded.
Did I pull a rabbit out of my ass and find a way to beat
him? Did I get steamrolled like a little bitch? Honestly I don’t really
remember. You see about 1:45 into the fight, while I was trying to secure a
double-leg takedown, Buck pushed my head down in a direction that would hide my
head from the referee and proceeded to launch a knee to my head that can be
seen here:
After the knee, all I can remember is seeing my blood going on
his leg and realizing that wasn’t good.
Approximately 18 minutes later………
I’m backstage. My head feels like its swelling by the
second, and I’m getting ice on my head from Boze and my mom. Where were the
doctors you might ask? Well apparently Michael Allen didn’t think I needed any
medical attention so he told the ringside doctor that he could leave without
the whole “making sure I was ok thing.” Eventually Papa Frank got some EMTs to
check me out and my dad went to get me some ice from a cooler by the
concessions table where the people at the table tried giving my dad shit about
getting said ice. Michael Allen even went to bow up to my dad for a second
before realizing that might night be such wise thing to do a 290lb man that
grew up in an all-black neighborhood in one of the roughest parts of New Jersey
in the mid 60’s (Clifton, NJ).
As I was groggily making my way to the car I was informed
that Junior was thrown out of the arena because he happened to be taping the
fight for a sponsor we had picked up (Cageside MMA) and an old lady came over
telling him that “he had to move.” Junior kindly informed this stupid cunt that
he was my brother and why he was taping the fight. Upon learning this the
stupid cunt put her middle finger in the camera lens, to which Junior responded
by moving her hand. She countered by knocking the camera out of Junior’s hand
which broke it and then this hysterical lady started pointing at Junior while
claiming that she was pushed by him. Almost immediately 6 guys tried jumping Junior.
AnorexicJesus and Subaru choked out two of the guys while
PapaFrank was pushing back and strong arming the rest of these hillbilly jerk
offs until security arrived to calm everybody down. YEA, there was a brawl
outside of the cage while there was a fight going on inside the cage. Who was
this stupid cunt that started this whole brawl by getting Junior jumped in the
first? Who were these people that jumped Junior and got tuned up by PapaFrank,
AnorexicJesus, and Subaru? None other that Johnny Buck’s mom, family, and
friends. It gets better. After everybody calmed down Buck’s manager/Promoter
for the event, Michael Allen walked over and was told by all of Buck’s people
(including his stupid cunt of a mom) that Junior was “taping the fight” and
Michael Allen subsequently had Junior thrown out even though there were no
rules about taping the fights and the excuse used to have Junior thrown out is
that he started the riot even though in all reality it was Buck’s mom that
started it.
After getting back to the hotel I called HotTeacher for some
reason and got back with her while crying (Maury Povich style) about everything
that had been transpiring recently, we had gone on break a couple weeks prior,
and we got back together right then and there. That’s when I realized that I
had a VERY bad concussion. Well that and throwing up in the parking lot of the
Brookstone Lodge when we got back there. Whenever I have had a concussion in
the past I regressed mentally. The last time I had one was a year and a half prior
when I was sparring with 187 and got hit with a right straight that I never saw
coming. After I came to I was on the phone with PapaFrank who he got mad about
me getting hurt and yelled at me. Where as we would usually just argue back
until we both gave up and apologized this time I started crying, because that’s
what I would do when PapaFrank yelled at me in my pre pubescent years. A year
and a half later it was the same thing except now I was talking to HotTeacher
who she was also crying about everything so at least we were on the level.
When I got back to Charleston HotTeacher took it upon
herself to take care of me for the following week since driving or even walking
in a straight line was still difficult for me. PapaFrank having the attention
to detail that he did decided to take a look at what footage we had of the
fight since he kept wondering why Buck’s mom would want to keep Junior from
taping the fight from behind Buck’s corner in the first place. Buck’s mom might
have broken the camera but it was a digital camera that stored videos on a
memory card which was still intact. He took a look at the footage and called to
tell me that I needed to watch it. I pulled up to the tow shop that my dad
works at to take a look at the fight and that’s where I saw the illegal knee
and elbows to the back of the head that Buck threw.
Now I knew why I had no memory. Every time I was about get
my bearings back and get back in the fight Buck hit me an illegal strike. This
suspicion was further enforced when I had to go to the ER three days after the
fight because I was still having bad dizzy spells and had the coordination of
Charlie Sheen after a week long bender. When we got to the emergency room I was
quickly admitted and had a CT scan run on me. Luckily there wasn’t any
hemorahging or fracturing of the skull but I was told that the amount of trauma
that I took to my head was equivalent to going through a major car wreck with a
HUGE concentration of the trauma to the back of my head. We actually had proof
of Buck fighting illegally and promptly filed a complaint with the NC Boxing
Authority. We figured it would be a slam dunk and the decision would be
overturned to a no contest or a Buck being disqualified. We also had never been
introduced to North Carolina politics.
After a few weeks of phone calls going back and forth with
the head of the NC Boxing Authority (Terrance Merriweather) about the complaint
he “invited” us to come up to Raleigh to look at the tape and “see if our tape
matched up with theirs” and if we “see what they see”. Me and PapaFrank agreed to head up there the
following morning at 6am which if anybody knows me is really fucking early for
me, but I wanted this whole justice thing I kept hearing about.
We arrived in Raleigh around noon. After parking in the
parking garage we started walking the 5 blocks it took to get to the NC Boxing
Authority Headquarters. After having to go through the metal detectors while
the military looking cop, who looked like he jerked off to episodes of The
Shield watched us from behind his desk. Did I mention that? The building also
happened to be a government building and was the headquarters for the city’s
police department. In other words the commissioners were also cops. They were
just the kind of cops that were too lazy for being on the street and were lucky
enough to get assigned to comfy desk jobs where they could jerk off to Cam
Newton, play golf, and talk about their fantasy leagues for the rest of their
lives.
After leaving PapaFrank’s pocket knife with MilitaryCop we
got in the elevator and went up to the floor that the NC Boxing Authority’s
Headquarters was located. We sat in this room that was much like a waiting room
for an upstart doctor’s office minus the attractive receptionist that is
screwing around with the doctor in order to get a good reference for medical
school. After waiting for about 10 minutes Merriweather and the rest of his
crew had us follow him to the conference room they had set up to view what we
were told would be the FOUR videos that they had of the fight since they were
supposed to be 4 cameras recording the fight as Merriweather said that the
promotion was required to by law. What they showed us instead was the edited
copy that Michael Allen had sent to them which was the copy to later be aired
on Sportsouth for their FightZone program that ran concurrent with Jay Adam’s
Brawl Call. Either the NC Boxing Authority though we had the short term memory
of an Alzheimer’s patient or they thought we were just THAT stupid. We watched
the video with them anyway and I recorded the times at which I noticed an
illegal strike taking place, as Merriweather requested. By the second round I
nearly had the first page full. Merriweather looked about as clueless as a
virgin in a XXX toy store. The funny part about the video is that whenever an illegal
strike was about to take place the camera “conveniently” switched to another
one who’s view was blocked from seeing the illegal strike.
After watching the edited version that Michael Allen sent
and which Merriweather accepted as being good enough, we showed the raw footage
that we had of the first round before Mrs. Buck destroyed our camera. We
pointed out the elbows to the back of the head to which Merriweather’s
assistant laid this line on us:
DoucheAssistant: “Well, he didn’t change direction with
those elbows.”
We kindly
responded by inferring as to what the fuck that had to do with anything. We
tried to kindly tell them that it was an illegal strike and the direction
didn’t matter since these jerk offs were about as skilled at bullshitting as
Charlie Sheen is at diplomacy. I guess DoucheAssisstant caught onto the fact
that we both had B.A.D. (Bullshit Allergy Disorder) because he eventually got
frustrated and stormed out of the room. Merriweather kept on trying to feed us
the same bullshit logic that he was trying to get us to buy into based one the
fact that he felt, “The knee or the illegal strikes wouldn’t have changed the
outcome of the fight.”
PapaFrank: (in a non threatening sort of way) “How bout you
get kneed in the face and let’s see how well you fight after that?”
This knee strike in question taken from a still in the video that we recovered (bear in mind knee strikes are illegal if an opponents knee is on the ground):
The sight
of Merriweather’s balls shrinking as he implored PapaFrank to calm down was
classic. Keep in mind these guys are cops. I started realizing that maybe this
is what’s wrong with the country. The guys that are getting paid by our tax
payer dollars to protect us don’t have the mental capacity, compassion, or the
balls to do so. Merriweather kept on trying to feed us their BS side of the
story with the hopes that he’d actually think we’d buy or at least agree with
it. We did neither. Finally we got Merriweather to actually answer about
whether he thought the knee was illegal or not (which it obviously was):
Merriweather: “Yea the knee was illegal but if you were
unconscious you should have told the ref that when it happened.”
HE REALLY SAID THAT. I couldn’t believe anybody was that
stupid either.
He went on
to say how my fight was the first MMA fight he had ever been. Allow me to
repeat that. The guy that is in charge of the safety and regulation of MMA in
the state of North Carolina, THE ENTIRE FUCKING STATE, had never been to a
mixed martial arts bout or event until the event that was owned and operated
Michael Allen and Scott Crosby. Oh yea, he also informed us that he only stayed
for 10 minutes and left. YEA, he drove from Raleigh to Asheville (4 hours and 6
minutes and yes I actually used Mapquest.com for that), stayed for 10 minutes
and left. If he didn’t feel like working he could have just had one of his
cronies cover for him right? DoucheAssistant sure seemed like he’d be willing
to detach from Merriweather’s nut sack for the night. Why would he then?
Honestly I have no proof but all I can think of is that song by the Wu Tang
Clan “C.R.E.A.M.” (Cash Rules Everything Around Me). He also went on and
claimed that Michael Allen wasn’t the promoter for the event even though a week
prior he was telling us over the phone that he was waiting on Michael Allen to
get the “raw footage of the fight”. This was starting to sound shadier than Don
King’s career. It only got better when Merriweather claimed we weren’t eligible
for medical insurance because of the contract we signed, which they had no
record of (or claimed not to have), which is a blatant violation of a Federal
Law called The Ali Reform Act which technically doesn’t apply to MMA fighters
in most states since most MMA bouts fall under the regulation of that state’s
athletic commissions but in North Carolina they fall under the Boxing Authority
where those laws apply and they won’t enforce it. I wonder why.
We left
the meeting with a sour taste in our mouth and Merriweather’s drivel caught on
recording. This fight isn’t over yet and there will more than likely be a part
II to it. When and if is a matter of uncertainty. What is more certain is the
path of my fighting career which is at a dead end now. Since the bout I have
been dealing with symptoms concurrent with Post Concussion Syndrome and Post
traumatic Stress Disorder which stem from Traumatic Brain injuries that I suffered
from the illegal knee and elbows. There is another condition associated with
this called Second Impact Syndrome which basically means if I took another bad
blow to the head I could die instantly. Kind of hard to train and fight
efficiently with that in the back of your mind. Plus after everything I saw
from this bout I want nothing to do with the sport as a competitor anymore. For
all this talk about boxing being corrupt it seems like MMA is on a similar
path.
To be continued……….
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