In the year 2001, B.B. Nashley contacted us at CQC Magazine and lamented that he was commissioned by a major New York City newspaper to write an investigative article on the craze of underground fighting. When he finished the piece, the paper did not want to buy or print it. We then purchased the article and ran it in our old magazine. Here is that year 2001 piece. - Hock
Underground Fight Clubs
 A Real Close Encounter
By B.B. Nashley
What must a young man brimming with testosterone do to carve his mark in fighting? Crime, sports, police work or the armed forces all provide excellent opportunities to get down and gritty with an opponent. But where does a young man go to win recognition and approval from his tribe . Many choose the fight of all fights a real close encounter at—Fight Clubs.
One evening recently, I found myself seriously wondering what draws men to this dark and dangerous sport. Deep into the heart of New York City I went to a secret location where at the invitation of a friend, I viewed private home videos of several arena fights. These videos showed fights so bloody, so intense, I couldn't believe it. The action took place at several martial arts schools across the New York Area, including the club where I reviewed the videos.
I watched fascinated as a huge man body slammed a smaller one down on the hard floor and leaped on top of him WWF style, but this was real. No gi. No mats. No refs. Pure violence. Onlookers orbited the ring like a pack of hungry hyenas. I had never seen a fight in my life like the ones on those tapes. Sweat and blood sprayed. It looked like one of those nature shows where the cougar downs the baby antelope with a vicious, primal gotcha glee. Then the behemoth bashed his elbow down on the squashed man's face. Bam!..the temple...Bam!..the side of the jaw. Several guys rushed in and pulled the bruiser off. Still more swarmed in and ministered to the victim. Moments later, they carried him away.
“What happened to him?” I asked my friend, I'll call him, “Drix” who sat beside me.
“Oh, they took him to the hospital,” Drix says. He reached over and switched off the tape, without even an eyebrow quirk, which makes me think maybe I need to explain how I got caught up in this adventure in the first place.
I met Drix through a friend at my local health club. At the time his arm was in a sling. When I asked what happened, he told me he sprained it in a fight, then he explained the type of fighting he did. I listened hypnotized as he described his hobby: training to fight in back rooms, alleys, parking lots, wherever, for the sake of experiencing a real fight. As he talked, I fumbled for my pencil. The writer in me knew a story when he smelled one.
“We got him into the emergency room. He was fucked up, but he's okay now. When he told the nurses he was working out in a karate class, and we confirmed it, they decided not to call the cops. After they patched him up, we went back to the fights. They had several more that night,” Drix says.
I watched some of the other fights that evening, but none seemed as violent as the first one. Rough, but at some point one guy football-tackled the other and turned the whole thing into a schoolyard wrestling match. The losers yelled their surrender. The bigger fighters always beat the smaller fighters.
Beside me on the studio couch for most of the evening sat Drix's buddy, Big Will, a tall skinny intense 20-something with a shaved head. Will did his share of weightlifting, for sure.
“Sometimes the cops know,” Big Will says. “Sometimes we call them before and say, hey, like we have some serious training at the dojo tonight. There may be some injuries. They don't care.”
Drix bobbed his head up and down. At 30, Drix harbors a lifelong devotion to martial arts. He likes his head shaved clean and sports tattoos of drunken monkeys on one arm and a green cobra on the other. Yes, he's studied all types of martial arts. But now he and all his friends are totally into the mystique of the backroom brawl. As I listened, I couldn't help wondering, why?
Apparently, Drix and his friends got frustrated about 6 years ago when after advancing up the chain of command in martial arts there were no realistic venues in which to express what they called “no holds barred” reality fighting (they have several names for it). Mostly it means no rules, and no holding back.
After the last film, we left the school. Drix followed me out and locked the front door behind us. “We couldn't really fight anywhere else,” Drix explains “so we organized our own events here once a month on Friday night.” Sometimes they fight in other places if the school, which is owned by a friend, has another event scheduled.
“We pick Friday's because this way we can, you know dude, heal up some by Monday morning when we gotta go back to work,” said Big Will with a grin. Will works as a sorter at a clothing factory.
Drix has a slightly different background. Over the years he taught Kung Fu full time but never made a go of it. Few people want to play as hard as he wants to practice. Now he works at his dad's auto repair shop.
“So we started inviting people over to fight on Fridays,” Drix continues.
“Anyone. No shit what size, we don't care. We are in it for the adventure,” Big Will says.
“No size to big,” Drix adds.
“How do you meet these people?” I asked as we rounded the street corner in route to my car.
“Lots of ways,” Drix says.
“There's a whole community,” says Big Will.
“We talk on the Internet, on these fight bulletin boards. We go to seminars. See them at gyms. We talk. Then network,” Drix continues. “We invite them to come, and they always have a fighter to talk up and push.”
“Do people gamble at these things?” I ask.
“Not really,” Drix says.
“I don't think much,” Big Will added. “In the arena fights, the bigger ones that you pay admission to get in, some gambling goes on, but that's not the reason they come.”
“No,” Drix agrees.
“Are there trophies?” I ask, trying to get at the reason why someone would risk having his face kicked in on a Friday night.
“No. You just get the rep of winning. You walk away with the tough guy rep.”
“Why can't you guys fight in these bigger arena matches?” I asked as we got into my car, recalling the wall posters covering the inside the karate school I just left.
“Politics,” Drix says.
“Yea, money and politics. They won't advertise you on any ticket unless you are…somebody. Paid fighters usually come from these grappling schools that people have heard of. Promoters call these schools looking for fighters sometimes,” Big Will says. “We don't have any connections. It's like marketing a name. We are nobodies.”
“…and there are too many of us nobodies with no place to fight, like this anyway. You come back Friday night in three weeks and you can see me fight!” Drix tells me. I take it as an invitation.
I drove them to a corner by a diner where they planned to meet a group of friends. As I pulled away, I mentally fast-forwarded to the upcoming Friday Night Fight Club event. I wondered if it would resemble a Grade C karate movie or a Brad Pitt movie.
I knew what Drix said was true. Before he left, Drix gave me a list of contacts, other people who agreed that fight promoters look for names they can use to pump ticket buyers. Then they worry about being sued over a fighter's injuries, no matter what precautions they take. I decided to look a few of them up.
***
Mikey Deluca was a retired kick boxer in Boston with his fingers into a lot of small sporting events. He was even in two Charles Bronson movies with real bit parts.
“Da kids today want to fight to the death, it seems to me,” Mikey tells me. We sit in his strip center business office from which he runs several businesses, once even an illegal sport numbers racket. “You get them to sign waivers, but if they get hurt, they will still come after ya! So you just have to have rules and a referee. Some of these kids. They don't like rules. I dun no, you know? It's a craze, like world wrestling. Kids cream each other with folding chairs, tables. Jesus! Nah!” Mikey waves his hand in the air, “I still throw together some karate tournaments. That's what I do. Some small boxing tickets, but these new tough guys! It's a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“Were there ever back room boxing matches?” I ask, trying to get him to talk about the bare-knuckle fight days a sports writer had tipped me off that he participated in.
“Yea-yea,” he says. “We use to fight back years ago bare-knuckle here and there. Even the mob put some together. But we use to just box. If a fella fell, you didn't squash him. You just turned him into pulp, stood there and pounded him until he couldn't get up. But all that is illegal now.”
“Did the mob fix those fights?”
“No. They ran a clean show. You know, they didn't care. They got paid. They didn't care who won. They had a fella who would work the neighborhood boxing gyms and get us to fight. The guy was a WW II Vet with one hand and one eye. Neva forgot him. Good ol' slob. Died years ago, God rest his soul because he took care of us if we got hurt and made sure we got our money. He was a bookie too. Ran numbers.”
“Where was the strangest place you ever fought one of these?”
“1966. Some guy's bachelor party in a beer hall. Broads and boxing. Whatta night!”
***
“It all started with the Gracie family and Brazilian Ju Jitsu and their Ultimate Fighting Challenge (UFC), almost what…10 years ago now?” Arthur, one of the UFC business contacts, told me. I note that Arthur adorns his head with a bad toupee and has a permanent smile most likely from an overzealous plastic surgeon, but, after all, he lives in California. Sporting the build of a gym rat, Arthur calls himself a business manager and a shingle outside the door to his office advertises him as a bookkeeper and accountant in Los Angeles. He says he bailed out of fighting because of the state-by-state frustrations caused trying to set up the regional contests.
“No one could decide if it was boxing or not, or who should regulate it or even allow the challenges to happen! State-by-state they denied us, sometimes well after they said yes to us and we had poured buckets of money into setting up the events. Finally we had to change the rules, more controls, less violence. That was the beginning of the end. The Gracies held a stacked deck in the beginning anyway. Now, mean 300 pound machines are out there and brother, let me tell you, if there were no rules in these fights, there would be a murder every match.”
And thus, hooked on the fire, and then deprived, fight-hungry men founded the lesser-known Fight Nights.
***
Big “K” took me out back behind his small martial arts school in southern California, leaving a judo class of tiny children under the control of a teenager.
“Here it is.” He showed me a folded-up, huge mountain of chain link, its fence posts full of collapsible hinges. “This is my octagon, my cage. A few nights a week I rent it out to a bar or a club, sometimes to a group of guys, to parties, whatever, for fights.” Tangled red streamers lay piled up beside the cage. The metallic heap barely fits on the back of K's Chevy truck, and he flies pennants to alert other drivers of the super-sized load
“That cage has made me a lot of money.”
“Do you organize some fights?” I ask.
“Sometimes. We have the kids fight in here at fairs and promo events. But that is strictly clean sport judo or jujutsu. What an attraction! I organize some fight nights at bars. There are college fight nights. I referee them. Ever see the strongman fights on FOX TV? They are like those. They get crazy too! You can get sued. But at some parties and parking lot fights behind bars, we just set it up, the cage, and get the hell out of there. Sometimes when we come back to collapse the cage the next morning and haul it off, we see plenty of bloodstains, and teeth! We have seen lots of teeth on the ground, and ripped clothes. No telling what went on, and I don't want to know.”
“Do you ever fight?” I asked.
“Use to fight, but I am 51 years old, and that's too old. I still have all my teeth. I use to fight bare-knuckle karate tournaments in the '70's and I still have my teeth.”
“Are there any differences between the bare-knuckle karate and these back room or cage fights today?” I ask.
“They were tough. The classes were tough. People got hurt. People threw up. In the tournaments you were supposed to control the contact, and we did a good job, unless it was a big title fight in the circuit, or a grudge match. And these grudge matches were no trumped up WWF stuff. They were real. There were circuits all over. Detroit, Dallas, New York. L.A. Big cities. Once in a while you would travel to another circuit. Lots of the old timers, guys like Chuck Norris−very tough, and Joe Lewis, those guys. They meant business and kept the ambulances running. Old karate and “jujitz” were very tough back then. Today it's all kid stuff. But in those tournaments you didn't go down unless you were knocked down. Then they stomped on you or bent over and power punched you. No ground fighting like today. Yeah, the karate of the '60's and early '70's were a lot like these cage fights, just no wrestling, that was for the Judo matches.”
***
Dr. Robert Parker, a Columbia psychiatrist and martial artist had an armful of books and his dry cleaning when I caught up with him on the parking lot of one his group clinic sites. Having written in a New York Times op-ed piece on violence and teens, I coaxed the sociologist into arriving early for one of his appointments so he could render an opinion on the subject of these macho battles.
“These young men are venting,” the doctor told me as his group session members congregated in the room beside us. “Our society leaves few opportunities to become a hero or test manhood. You have crime, sports, policing or the armed forces for example, where a young man, brimming with testosterone might leave his mark, but few opportunities arise where a man may win recognition and the approval of his tribe. Few will commit to the causes involved with war and police work. They just want to fight. And to many, boxing is entirely too tame.”
I wondered what kind of tribe I would see back in New York that Friday night.
***
I felt like a bit player in a gangster movie as I knocked on the school door where the fights were schedule to take place. Rolls of butcher paper taped to the front windows restricted the normal view inside. Projected shadows rippled across the paper like a makeshift movie screen. I tried the door handle only to discover someone had thrown the door lock. Momentarily, the door cracked open to reveal an eyeball and a raised eyebrow.
“I'm here with Drix and Big Will?” I say in a half question. The password works, and the door opens for my entry. Conversation rumbles among the 27 people I count as I enter. Sixteen white, 7 Hispanic and 4 black. All seem like college chums, all brothers in the cause that supersedes racism. Four roll on the floor demonstrating what appear to be solutions to wrestling holds. Others listen intently as the tricks are passed about. Two coolers containing beer, water and soda sit against the wall, intermixed with several big gym bags and backpacks. Somewhere, a boom box plays rap music. Several members near the door greet me as if I am a member of a secret society. I don't see Drix or Big Will. I get a beer, then mingle with and study this unusual crowd. The oldest looks about 40-something, the youngest maybe 19-years-old.
The first fight starts will little fan-fare. An official of some type stands between two men as they square off in the corner of the room, both wear T-shirts and jeans and big black boots, which I didn't' expect. I didn't know what they would wear on their feet, but I didn't expect boots. No boxing gloves. They circle each other in a serious silence as the onlookers, and myself watch completely mesmerized. An energy of waiting electrifies the room. One of the men pretends to dodge in, making the other flinch, then stops. Then the flincher circles closer, then closer, and hits the dodger square in the face with a fist. It happens like lightening, and the victim seems to lose all intelligence behind his open eyes. He doesn't have long to stumble before the puncher hits him again in the jaw, somewhere with a whip like motion. The recipient falls hard on his ass as the observer's part ways, and his shoulder hits the wall. Eyes open…he's out. Someone makes a spastic attempt at getting him up, but he has no idea where up and down is. The official yells, “okay, he's out!” and several bystanders prop the loser up in a chair and hand him some ice in a beach towel. The whole round takes only 8 seconds.
“Are they always this quick?” I asked one of my new friends.
“Sometimes,” he answers. “You never know what will be the ace. If a dude'll move in for the kill, it could be very fast. If they like to jab and play and wrestle, it could take a long time.
Two others start up their match. They dive into each other, and a very boring wrestling match begins. They roll around like lobsters trying to get the best of each other, purposely not poking fingers into eyes, or even punching. After about 5 minutes, I wander over to the first loser and kneel beside him. He's still stunned. Someone pampers him and makes sure he swallows a pile of aspirin. He mumbles… “lucky punch.” I get the idea he doesn't even know a second punch hit him.
Back inside the “ring” I suddenly hear a yelp, and one of the fighter's surrenders. They stand, red-eared and flushed with exhaustion. This no-rules fight is fought with wrestling rules and lasts almost 10 minutes.
Then Drix and Big Will strut out from the locker room with game faces, beside three other guys. Drix wears a gray sweatshirt and sweat pants with a towel thrown over his shoulder. He and Will step into the center of the floor. Drix shove a mouthpiece into his mouth. A guy from the locker room, wearing a black T-shirt with a dozen martial arts symbols in gold walks in also. The referee says to begin.
Like the last two fighters they circle each other first. The man in the black T-shirt rests both his fists on his face, which I think looks peculiar. Drix's hands are down at his sides. They play tag, swinging their hands in the air and after each swing; the man puts his fists back up by his face. Drix swings at the face then kicks the man in the kneecap. Hard. Real hard. It looks real bad, and the man yelps and falls back on the floor.
The crowd parts. Drix makes a move to jump on him, but the guy looks like a car has hit him. Drix stops. The man gets back up with the stumble of a rookie skier. He can't put any weight on the knee. He tries to concentrate on the fight, but puts his foot down and tests his balance with a grimace. Drix stands still and watches, then walks up and asks if he's okay. Others approach and a group discussion begins about the knee as if he's a construction worker who's been wounded on the job. They all decide to take the injured man to the hospital.
“Whose got a car?” someone asks, but in a world of subways and buses, no one answers.
“I do,” I call out from the back of the room.
Drix said, “Can you take him to the hospital? This looks real bad.” With each arm around a shoulder of his friends, the wounded guy hobbles out to my car, and they all crawl in for the ride to the emergency room. There we wait for about three hours.
“What do you guys train in?” I asked one of the friends in a fit of boredom.
“Boxing. Shoot wrestling. Filipino martial arts.” He answers and runs a string of names like Bruce Lee and some others I never heard of, and the number of years in each.
“After all those years…” I say shaking my head, “and one good kick to the knee and it's over?” I say it more to myself than to him.
“ Shit happens man,” he says in a mumble. While we sit, a man comes in who has hurt his back falling off a ladder while painting. A traffic accident sends two more people our way with bleeding heads. Old people come in afraid and ill. One has the flu.
X-rays and several consultations later, our guy's knee turns out to be severely hyper-extended and needs an emergency visit to the bone doctor the next day. I take them all home, and then I drive passed the school and down the avenue where the evening's adventure began. It's dark. The butcher paper is gone. No more fights, at least for a few weeks.
Fight Clubs! What a bizarre, strange night of courteous, caring, detached hyper-violence. I drive home with a strange sense of the term reality fighting. A loser limps home, with knee surgery scheduled for the following day. One-kick Drix already home too with his new tough guy rep, the hot talk of some obscure chat line, his heroism based on the opinions of some 26 onlookers in a city of millions. Only one word comes to mind. Bizarre. 
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