A friend at work gave me a call to ask me whether I was interested in visiting a Fighting Championship at the Singapore Indoor Arena, as he had a spare ticket.
I said “hell yeah”, as I always wanted to visit one of these boxing or martial art tournaments to really get in the spirit of the atmosphere during the matches, and it turned out to be an enjoyable session indeed.
We met-up at Clarke Quay, which is actually quite a nice area, full of the bars and restaurants as one would expect (with the price that matches). We met-up at Highlander which seems a nice place, serving some nice malts, I would like to visit this place again at some point to try them out, as this time I stuck with a lager. We had a kebab at a place in the Quay’s, which accompanied the pint very nicely 🙂
We then caught a cab to the Indoor Arena arriving just gone 7.15pm, we thought we were late, but it turned out that the fun started at 7.30pm – so we were still early, luckily – ha!
The whole thing turned out to be a ton of laughs and fun. My mate and I were chatting about the pairing system, as we thought that it was not as fair as we would have expected, what this created is a couple of matches that were one-sided, which ended in KO’s or similar during the first round! It also seemed to favour the Evolve MMA team, which ended up wining 5 of their 6 matches – hey-ho! But it was good entertainment seeing chaps beat the crap out of each other – lol!
The rules for One Fighting Championship (OFC) uss a combination rule-set of Global MMA Best Practice, Blending Asian and Non-Asian rules. In short, very confusion for me 🙂 Each bout is scheduled to have 3 rounds of 5 minutes per round, with a 1 minute break in-between rounds. A victory would be attained by one of the following; knock-out, submission, verbal tap-out, technical knock-out by the referee stoppage, cornerman requests a stoppage or Decision by the judges.
- Soo Chul Kim versus Leandro Issa
- Daniel Mashamaite versus Yodsanan Sityodtong
- Ma Xing Yu versus Vuyisile Colossa
- Susovan Ghosh versus Radeem Rahman
- Yuan Chun Bo versus Eddie Ng
- Andy Wang versus Zorobabel Moreira
- Seok Mo Kim versus Gregor Gracie
- Eric Kelly versus Mitch Chilson
- Yoshiyuki Yoshida versus Phil Baroni
- Eduard Folayang versus A Sol Kwon
The first match started within a ‘groin’ injury after 10 seconds, the guy was in agony, then we saw the slow-replay on the big screen, and all of the blokes said an almighty groan together, whilts laughter came from the women (as always!) Ha! That must have been a painful kick to the knackers! It was pretty funny though.
One chap (Ghosh) that stood out was his promotional photo in the programme, he looked quite…well…shocking in his photo, as if that was his fighting ‘defence pose’ Look very funny, and we both were cracking up every time we saw him, or mentioned him after the fight 🙂 Brilliant.
I do find those overly ‘pose’ the one that I want to lose their game, I would prefer to cheer the underdog or the ‘calmer’ fighter. This happened with Chilson, who lost his game. Whoops!
Another match went all the way to the end, it was the Yoshida versus Baroni match. Baroni was another ‘poser’ coming into the arena wearing shades and a march-pose. But he lost the game by a clear judges decisions, and lost the crowd, as he didn’t even offer a gentlemen hand-shake to the winner. The crowd boo’d him as left the ring, and he did the one-finger salute to them! Nice to see he is using the audience to his benefit – probably caused the few fans he had remaining to boo him too! Bad loser! Ha!
I took quite a few photos, as I wanted to remember the event with fond memories, hope you enjoy them!
Towards the end of the tournament, we agreed to rush off as the whole tournament was over-running by about an hour. So we wanted to try to catch the last MRT (which was around 11.30pm). We went to the Stadium MRT with quite a few people, just before the end of the last fight, but the last southbound had already departed, so we took the last one north, as we knew there would be more chance of catching a cab away from the Stadium. We exited at the first stop which was Mountbatten MRT, we didn’t know the area at all, but we hoped we would find a taxi outside of the station. We got chatting with another commuter who asked us whether we were going to the after-party at the Butter Factory, we decided to give it a go. It was just by the One Fulleton, so we arrived just before middnight and noticed that there was a big queue already. As we had the OneFC ticket, this had a dedicated queue alongside, which we were the first in entering. Everyone else must have been stuck at the stadium 🙂 Anyway, the place was not letting people in let, as the Police and Authorities were doing a safety check, it must have been caused by a previous incident, and the staff told us it would be another 15mins or so…I think the “or so” meant it could take an 30mins or and hour, which I felt was more likely!
Anyway, the went for a stroll and arrived back, and they finally started to allow people in – about 45 minutes later. We entered the place, and actually I do believe it was only medicre. Weird set-up…firstly hardly anyone was inside, and everywhere was lined-off with VIP only ‘reserved’ seating, so the only ‘free’ area was the open-bar and the relatively small dance floor. Poor, very poor! Even when we went to the bar the service was quite bad, the drinks arrived quickly, but the payment process was broken, it took about 5 minutes just to get your change or your card processed. The girl at the till was struggling big time, and this was when it wasn’t that busy or full! I really don’t know how they would cope when it is full!
We decided to leave after the second drink, and walked down the corridor, we noted a stair case that we just walked past, so double backed and we then bumped into one of the fighers who was coming up with his entourage. It was Yoshiyuki Yoshida, who you will recall beat the pants of Phil (“Bad Loser”) Baroni! Great to see such a humble and gentle winner! Brilliant, so we managed to take a photo with him. I acknowledged his victory and wished him luck.
We then went down the staircase, and left the club, we waited at the road-side for a taxi, as there were a few groups waiting to leave (probably doing the same thing as us!) – even though it was only 2.30am! We then noted another taxi pull-up and who exited, well it was Gregor Graice, who won his match against Seok Mo Kim, so another photo opportunity. Brilliant, hey? As they say timing is everything. We then decided to hangaround to see who else ‘might’ turn up. A few other taxi’s pulled up, and one had Baroni inside, he looked quite dejected, but walked passed a silent small crowd. I think everything was laughing inside, but didn’t want to show it, in case we trigger another reaction. Anyway, I decided to take a photo of him walking past – luckily, neither he nor his entourage noticed it!
We then decided to leave, but as we were quite peckish, we walked to Lau Pa Sat and we had some Satay’s, which was delicious, and Sting Ray Fish, which was equally tasty indeed. What better way to end the night.
We finally managed to get a taxi and headed home! Brilliant night, great fun, and very entertaining!