Cage fighting is something you don’t see on a daily basis, and you certainly don’t see three Eastern Michigan University students competing in cage fights on Pay Per View.
On Friday, though, you can. Greg “Strong Hand” Calvert, who is also the vice president of EMU’s MMA club; Kevyn “Milkman” Kendrick and Quamie “Q-Beck” Beck will be cage fighting in Cincinnati. These three fighters were asked to fight in this show by Mike Wick, who promotes for the independent Fight League.
Cage fighting is a form of Mixed Martial Arts also known as MMA. Here at EMU, MMA is a student organization.
“The promoter has paid for the Eastern fighters to have hotel rooms the night before and the night of the fight.” Calvert said, “It’s a fight sanctioned by the Ohio Athletic Commission.”
You can watch it all on TV at 8 p.m. If you happen to be on or around campus that evening, and want to watch, head to the Walton/Putnam Lounge in the first year center for a watch party. Doors to the lounge open at 7:30 p.m.
The team is actually encouraging people to attend this party, because there will be people who are knowledgeable on the subject of MMA, and they will be explaining technical aspects of the sport some viewers may not understand. This fight will also be shown on www.cagefightinglive.com and the name of the show is called IFL Armageddon for those of you who want to watch the fights on your own.
MMA is a full-contact, aggressive sport. While training, the fighters have orders yelled at them. They practice as a team and support each other as a team but compete as individuals. They need to be able to make weight just like wrestlers do. Calvert will be fighting in the 155-pound weight class, Kendrick at 145 and Beck at 170.
Coach C.J. Jackson, who is an EMU student, instructor and personal trainer at the REC/IM explained safety is his number one concern.
Right now, Jackson is trying to get new mats for the teams to work out on, because the ones they have at the moment are dangerous. They don’t have much cushion left, so it is easy to break a bone or get some other kind of injury. Before each fight the fighters are given blood tests to make sure they are clean of any kind of drugs. Jackson encourages a healthy lifestyle, which includes healthy eating, limited alcohol intake, not smoking and daily workouts. He makes sure his fighters do well in school, and if they aren’t doing well he helps find a solution.
EMU has had an MMA club since 2005, but back then it was called Detroit MMA. In 2006, EMU decided to go off on its own and made the club a student organization so it could get school funding. EMU’s MMA club has won numerous fights and has gotten numerous belts as well as other honors. Though there are individual fights, Jackson and the rest of the team take pride in them all.
According to Jackson, since MMA was first introduced to EMU, there have been more than 120 members. Currently, there are between 17 and 22 members. At the beginning of the year a lot of students came to practices, but after a few weeks the self-disciplined and not so self-disciplined started to separate from one another, and Jackson can tell who will stick around and who won’t.
At the beginning of this semester freshman Phebie Mier and some of her friends met some of the guys from the club, including Calvert. They started talking, and Mier and a few of her friends thought it would be fun to go to a practice or two just to mess around. They weren’t planning on taking the sport seriously. She said she didn’t really think she would like it, but now she loves it.
“I love the energy, it’s fun and it just feels good,” Mier said.
The only gripe she has is when new guys join the team or come to a practice, most of them won’t want to fight against her, and she is very capable of defending herself, she said.
Out of Mier’s girlfriends who decided to come out and practice with the guys, Mier is the only one who decided to stay and is the only girl on the team. Jackson describes Mier as “a confident young lady who does the same things at practice as any of the guys; if not better than some of the guys.”
Alex Newsome is a sophomore who started training in June. He says it is a good cardio workout. He wrestled in high school. He also says it is an amazing way to lose weight; in a month and a half he has lost 30 pounds.
Jackson is getting him in shape to compete in a body building show, and after that Newsome plans on competing in his first MMA fight. He is doing it in that order because it is very easy to get hurt in a fight. He doesn’t want the fight to kill his chances of winning the body-building show.
People say MMA is a great workout, but it can also be a dangerous sport. You can easily break bones, and because this is a full-contact sport you have to have your guard up at all times.
Jackson said he discourages his fighters from using any moves outside of the gym. A fight against someone who doesn’t know the MMA moves would not be a fair fight, he said.
