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Saturday 22nd 2012 is a night that will go down in history for Feral Combat, in addition to surviving the mayan apocalypse the promotion crowned its first three champions- and also had the most eventful press conference to date.
Immediately after the bouts representatives of the MMA media piled into a side room at Hayashi's, London in anticipation of talking to 3 new champions- Gunnar Sigbjornsson (HW 3-1 MMA, 3-1 FC), Mariusz Oliwa (LHW 3-0 MMA, 3-0 FC) and Ben Jackson (LW 4-1 MMA, 4-1 FC)- and also under the promise that the promotion would reveal the first title defences for these champions, expected to be the headline bouts of the promotions next 3 numbered events.
The conference started, hosted by Feral Combat head of marketing Anna-Marie Raven invited to the stage each of the 3 new champions to her left, their opponents Will Dickinson (10-1 MMA, 4-1 FC), Dan Smith (7-3 MMA, 4-1 FC) and Frederick Barbarossa (11-5 MMA, 4-2 FC) to her right, the end spot of each row taken by KO of the night winner, Amsterdam based Russian heavyweight Lubomir "Kolos" Aleksandrowicz (2-0 MMA, 2-0 FC) and submission of the night winner Nanaki Yotomishi (3-4 MMA, 1-2 FC).
After the fighters had made themselves comfortable Miss Raven oppened with some housekeeping- confirming the event as a sell out and as such the events biggest event to date- doubling the previous best attendance of 1,000 held by Feral Combat 3. She then went on to confirm the of the night awards, set t $2,500 each, for Aleksandrowicz and Yotomishi as well as announcing that fight of the night had been awarded to the heavyweight title fight- an epic 4 and a half round war. She then went on to open the floor up to the excited journalists.
The first question came from the tycoon times, addressed to the heavyweights asking if, with their series against each other now totalling almost 40 minutes of in cage action that had earned each man a win a piece and a fight of the night bonus on both occasions whether there would be a rubber match soon. Barbarossa stepped in first “Gunnar, he is very good, I congratulating him, one day Im sure we will fight again, but until then I'll take whoever they put infront of me, show I am the top. Im disappointed to have spent so long on the matt, I will work on it, maybe next time I can knock him out. But tonight is Gunnars night, I wont take that away from him..we'll see, we will see”.
The next question came from grappling weekly- addressing Yotomishi asking whether he was surprised to have the only submission finish on a card which featured 5 BJJ brown belts and where he thought his win (a first round Guillotine choke win over highly touted American Tony Stewart (5-3 MMA, 0-1 FC)) put him in the division. Yotomishi, a purple belt under Rift Fighting Academy's head grappling coach Antoine Mercer, quickly apologised for his english and continued in his native Japanese – Miss Raven began translating the answer “Nanaki is very happy with his win.. he knew his opponent was a strong wrestler and would want to spend the fight ontop of him, but with his BJJ he did not mind being on his back, it was just waiting for the mistake then squeeze, squeeze very hard” After a brief pause while the laughter from the media died down she continued “It is good to have my first win for Feral Combat and...”
Lightweight Champion Ben Jackson cut her off mid sentence with a string of profanity, his first few attempts at a sentence were neither coherent or printable in family friendly publications, he stood up and shouted at Miss Raven that she was putting words in the fighters mouth, that the management was manipulating the fighters- a continuation of his post fight rant alleging that his opponent Smith had an easy road to the final based on favouritism. Jackson ignored Ravens requests to return to his seat and let Mr Yotomishi finish, his torrent of abuse still audible even after the sound team cut his mic, Jackson and Smith squared off at the central podium briefly before Smiths team mate Dickinson picked Smith up over one shoulder and carried him out the room. Yotomishi too looked angry at the incident and too rose from his seat, he was joined in short order by RFA training partners Theon Greyjoy (still visibly wobbly from a KO loss to Pedro Da Silva on tonight's undercard) and Christian Soendergaard (who makes his FC début at bar brawl 3 in January). Faced with the two middleweights Jackson left via a side door under some very heavy encouragement from his corner men.
Several minutes of confusion passed before Miss Raven retook the podium, visibly flustered and upset by the incident, apologising for having to cut short the press conference saying that the expected fight announcements will instead come in press releases over the coming days.
This journalist for one looks forward to those announcements, and wonders what other fallout from this situation may come out.
Ben Ulrich – tycoon times.
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