AMA 5 Fight night, June 24 2011

Another great night for Mike Hammoud’s AMA – All Martial Arts fight series at the Fraserview Hall. Justin Pierrot interviewed the fighters afterwards to tell us a little bit more about how it went down in the ring.

Navi Mazary took the first fight of the night, in super middleweight Muay Thai against Jeremey Neufeld with an early TKO. Navi did put in a hard leg kick on Neufeld, but afterward said that he felt that Neufeld just wasn’t prepared for the fight. Neufeld took it hard in the corner and then went down with an apparent knee injury.

Palvir Atwall from Bisla’s in Surrey had a strong win against Rob Kreuse from Wolfe’s Den in North Vancouver by judges unanimous decision. Going in with the definite height and reach advantage, Atwall said he put his strategy on those assets and used his jab and rights, as well as he could. The 15 year old Atwall, looks forward to more action and eventually moving up in weight divisions.

Chris ‘The Predator’ Hansen was the winner by triangle choke in the first round over Sean Devries. I asked Chris what his game plan was, and did he expect to get a triangle submission so quickly?

“Yeah, triangle choke is my bread and butter. I’ve got long legs, so triangle choke is usually what I go for. I was going to stand with him a little bit more but I felt his power right away. Decided it would be a smart thing to do. He bloodied me up on the ground, he has lots of power. So hats off to Sean Devries.”

Chris said his plans are to keep fighting, work on his stand up, and will be submitting more people in the future.

Ryan Daley was declared the winner by judges unanimous decision in the evening’s only straight up kickboxing bout, in the heavyweight division with Lloyd Kenny. Ryan says his game plan going in was with “lots of jabs. Lots of leg kicks, wear him down.” And besides that? “Being busy, keep on top of him, moving around, good technique. It seemed to work.”

I asked Suraj Bangarh, how he felt to be half of tonight’s unanimous draw in a Muay Thai bout at 147 lbs. You got that draw, off a point deduction, how are you feeling about that?

“Pretty upset actually, it makes me feel like I didn’t do too much, felt like I had the fight. 2nd round could have been a tie. 1st round was his, the 3rd round was mine. It should have gone towards me. What can you do?”

As you mentioned in the 2nd round and in the 3rd round, you were coming back with huge kicks. Was that part of your training that you specifically focused on, or did it feel right at the moment?

“I’ve been doing martial arts for 11 years in my life now, mostly karate, just started kickboxing for 3 years now. Kicks come from my karate background, definitely.”

I asked Houtan Ali Kashani, the other competitor of tonight’s draw in the Muay Thai bout, about the deducted point for a low shot. Houtan said he was surprised to get the deduction right away, before receiving a warning.

“He is a Karate guy, he tried to throw more front kicks, but front kicks don’t work on me. Walking into it, it will hit you, but just standing there, it’s not gonna work.”

Sebastian Ankiel from Team Karma got his win against Jessie “The Russian Bear” Makortoff, in almost record time, with a dominant performance in the heavyweight division for MMA. Ankiel admitted, “ it feels pretty good. First fight out. Make a statement, I think I did that today.” Ankiel also confirmed that in preparation for the fight, he brought down his weight from 307 to 244 lbs, by training almost full time.

Cheryl Chan quickly took out Femina Wachal to win the AMA Women’s flyweight champion belt.

28 seconds is the fastest submission of the night so far. You rocked her with a really solid punch and then she just turtled. What was going through your mind when you saw her back?

”I grabbed her neck and choked her out, been working on it for a long time… instinct. Soon as she turned her back, I jumped her.”

”I learnt a lot from that last fight. I got back into the gym. Trained really hard. I think I grew a lot more than with any other fight. I got refocused and got ready to get back in there.”

Wade Apps, won his mma fight over Parker Lang, in the last 20 seconds of round 1. Apps had an impressive round of ground and pound, taking it into a shoulder lock. Was that what you were looking to do, go for the submission, or did you have other things in mind?

”It was more or less what I wanted to do, take him down, heard he had decent striking. So I took him down, that’s what happened.”

Wade says he is looking for more amateur fights, and then will turn pro.

Bruce Tran was the winner of the co-main event, Muay Thai at 135 lbs by split decision from the Judges, over Jay Jauncey from WKX. Tran said, “I feel very exhausted, a pretty cool fight. Could have gone either way, did the best I could. He has some pretty good front kicks. I had to watch for his moves.”

Tricky Nick Marinos is now the AMA Welterweight champion, the winner by stoppage in round 3 over Brett Lucero from Crisis MMA in Olympia WA.

Nick went on to tell us, “I feel good, was little worried about my cardio, because I packed on some weight for this fight. I knew my opponent was gonna be much bigger so I needed to have the same kind of stopping power.

Every fight that I’ve gotten into, I’ve been confident that I’m going to win but I always have that worry. Every fight I get into, I know my guard game is pretty strong, even though he is on top of me, I can hold that position for a long long time and wait for the right moment, to either get out or do a reversal, once I get on my game. I don’t scramble and make bad decisions, my game plan worked. I knew he was bigger, he was stronger, a champion from Washington State, I had to take my time to wear him out, and as soon as I saw him getting into round 3, and I saw his punches getting slow, I saw his punches slowing down. I came in with that hook, and I stopped him, rung his bell, and then boom, the take down! I got on top, the plan worked out great.”