BAMMA 4

BAMMA 4

So last night was the night Tom ‘Kong’ Watson finally fought Alex ‘Reidinator’ Reid for BAMMA’s Middleweight Belt. As most of you will know this fight should have happened back in May but Reid had to pull out due to an injury. The fight was also due to be live on bravo in may so I wasn’t shocked to find out it would also be aired live last night.
I’m going to focus more on the event and how it was ran than the fights itself in this article. All the fights were finished well within the distance except the main event. This was the only fight to go to the judges scorecards on the night.
I have been to a few mma events ranging from ufc events to local events such as ultimate impact, Tear up. So I was interested to see how the so called flagship British mma organisation event would compare to the big dog that is the ufc. I was impressed by how much media coverage this fight was getting, so I had high hopes for this event.
The doors were due to open at 4pm but for some unknown reason they didn’t open until 20 past 4 and it was freezing outside! I presume that was down to the arena and was out of bamma’s control. So when we finally got into the arena we tried to go sit in our seats ready for the first fight which was due to start at 5pm.
We were told by the steward that there was a 5 minute delay due to the crew sound checking and testing for tonight’s live broadcast. We were fine with it as it was only 5 minutes. That 5 minutes soon turnt into 10 minutes and again we asked the steward. She happily went and checked and it was definitely going to be just 5 more minutes. 15 minutes later we were still stood outside waiting to go in and the first fight was due to start any minute.
We started to get pretty annoyed now and couldn’t help but notice the amount of technicians going in and out of the door near us and looking very stressed. Luckily we only had to wait 5 more minutes and we were allowed to take our seats. When we walked in and seen the octagon and our first impression was it was very professional.
When we got to our seats we found an armrest broken and one of the chairs had no cover on it. It was then pointed out to me all the wires underneath and around our seats, I forgot about them later and proceeded to trip over and sadly spill my pint of cider (I cried inside haha). We then noticed the massive amount of wires just above our head which was very visible to a lot of the crowd by us and it just looked tacky.
It was obvious that the sound check and the video check had either been rushed or not finished because microphones did work then didn’t. The videos never started then started randomly and started but skipped. It just seemed tacky, cheap and rushed.
The first bout got started pretty quickly and also ended pretty sharpish too. The next two bouts also followed in a similar fashion As soon as one ended the next bout was almost ready to start. After the third bout had ended the ring announcer told us we had 15 minutes before the next bout was going to start.
I’m used to being informed of breaks at other mma events so I wasn’t surprised by this and happily just relaxed for a bit before the action began again. After the fourth bout had finished we were expecting either the next fight to start ASAP or get told it was going to be 10/15 minutes before the start of the next bout. If you’re unlucky enough to follow me on twitter (@danyoung260785) you would have noticed that I was ranting a lot about waiting.
I think the fifth bout started approximately 20 minutes after the previous bout had ended. But at no time were we told about this wait. We then were randomly called over by the stewards. We thought we had done something wrong until she asked how would we like to be sat down in all the empty seats. Obviously we said yes straight away. This came as such a shock to get moved......Dana white I hope you read this because I’m at ufc 120!
The next few bouts followed the same sort of pattern with various amounts of time waiting in between the bouts. The longest amount of time we waited was about 50 minutes and we knew that was coming as it was the main event which was being aired live on bravo.
During the whole event it seemed like that the main event was the only important bout on the fight. Im sure other fighters would have felt a bit undermined by this because i think all the fighters are just important as one another to make the whole event a success.
I did like how all the fighters who had already fought that night mingled with the crowd and happily posed for photos. I don’t know if I have seen this at ufc events. But I’m sure they would do. I was lucky enough to meet and chat to Paul ‘Semtex’ Daley and Marc Goddard during the night.
Overall I think the event was a massive success because everyone at work was talking about the fight today asking me questions and some even want to come to the next event. Personally the fights that night were brilliant and yes I was stood on my seat (I needed too I’m only 5 ft 7!) for the main event. I will be making every attempt to go to BAMMA 5 in Newcastle in December and I’m sure it will be very popular after Saturday’s event.

Twitter @danyoungmma