The fight stuff

Thomas Crosse and Mikey Flanagan are locked in a padded room.
With just one week to go before their fights, it could be argued that such a room is the best place for them.
You see, there is a perception, unenlightened perhaps, that anyone who enters a mixed martial arts (MMA) contest must be mad.
Not so, Crosse and Flanagan. The small room with wrestling mats and loud music in the home of their Brazilian jiujitsu (BJJ) trainer John Eustace offers the pair a place to give their grappling a final polish before stepping into the cage on Saturday night.
After finishing a gruelling session they chat about the upcoming fights and parts of their game they still want to fine tune in their last week of training.
The two fighters, both aged 23, who have known each other since secondary school, travelled a long road to get here.
They’ve been training hard since mid-November when they were offered the chance to fight on the MMA Clinic Amateur Fight Night 2 card in the Rochestown Park Hotel in Cork this weekend.
While Flanagan, who hails from Clonbony, will be making his cage debut on Saturday, he’s no stranger to martial arts, having dedicated years to tae kwon do.
“I started when I was seven in Ennistymon doing tae kwon do with Martin Ryan. My father brought me along and I just took it up from there. I got my black belt when I was 11 and I got my second degree when I was 16.”
On top of winning the rookie 60kg category in the Irish MMA League in 2010 he also has competition experience in BJJ and full contact kickboxing.
Although Mikey – who fights in the 61kg bracket – is the first of his family to be involved in martial arts, his father provided a good example for him, making fitness a part of his life.
As well as doing tae kwon do with him for a year or two after he started, Flanagan’s father “was always into weight lifting and training and fitness… there was always training involved,” he explains.
He may be the less experienced martial artist, but Saturday won’t be Crosse’s first time in the cage. He has fought twice before – once at 74kg and once at 77kg.
“I won the first one by decision, it went the whole three rounds. The second one I won in a minute and 15 with a guillotine choke.”
A brief dalliance with boxing was the sum total of Crosse’s combat sports experience. “When I was eight I did boxing for about a month with the Kilfenora Boxing Club but I stopped then and went into Gaelic sports. I basically started martial arts in 2009 when I was 21 with Mikey.”
Crosse and Flanagan both played football for Moy but Thomas’ playing days ended after a knee injury. Building on his own growing interest, Flanagan offered Crosse the opportunity to start training together in MMA.
“I’d never done jiujitsu, I’d no judo done, I’d no boxing or kickboxing so I just started straight into MMA. We used to train one night with Mikey and when we joined another club we trained three or four nights a week with them. It all escalated from there.”
Working with Fightsports Clare for their grappling and Phoenix Kickboxing Club for their striking, the average week sees the pair train anywhere between three and eight times.
Fitting such an arduous schedule around work, family and loved ones isn’t easy. Even at amateur level, the life of a mixed martial artist is one of dedication and sacrifice.
“On Tuesday and Thursday nights we do jiujitsu with John and then go sparring with the Adam (Leyden) and the Phoenix kickboxers. Then I do a Monday night, a Wednesday night and maybe a Friday morning with John. I do my own conditioning then on top of that. I try to get three sessions but it’s mainly two I can squeeze in,” says Crosse, who is originally from Ennistymon.
Flanagan, who owns a digger and is involved in plant hire and construction, maintains a similar schedule and admits that keeping up can get a bit tough at times. “I find it hard. I’m busy with work,” he says. “I come home from work at 6pm, get my gear, eat a bit and straight out the door down to Ennis. Then back home by 9.30pm or 10pm.”
Crosse, a butcher, agrees with that assessment. “It’s tough,” he says. “My girlfriend, Laura, is very supportive. She knows I have to train and she is very considerate about me going. I’m missing for most of the day at work and then I’m gone two and three hours at night. After the fight I’ll take a week off to make up for a bit of time and then just be back to two or three nights.”
Modern MMA – it isn’t called ultimate fighting, cage fighting or anything else – was born out of a schoolboyish desire to answer the question, “which martial art is the best?”
Under the promotional banner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the sport’s initial incarnation in the early ’90s was a brutal, bare knuckle, barely regulated spectacle.
When the company changed hands in 2001 a number of changes were made, including instituting weight classes, a unified code of rules and requiring the fighters to wear 4oz, fingerless gloves. In the US, MMA is now as strictly regulated as professional boxing.
Addressing the misconceptions about the sport is just one of the aspects of doing it, explains Crosse. “Anybody watching UFC, who’s watched it recently, knows what it’s about. But people who watched it before the changes think it’s a bloodbath sport with nutters going in to physically harm each other.
“Fair enough, during those nine minutes fights I could hurt someone, but when it’s over you shake hands and you walk away. There’s no bad blood with it.
“A lot of people don’t understand MMA. You say MMA and they stop and look at you. But if you say UFC, then they’re like ‘what’s wrong with you? Why would you do that to yourself?’ But I’ve never been hurt once in a competition.”
Flanagan agrees that the perception and the truth of MMA are very different. It’s not about fighting for him, it’s about pushing his limits to see just how good he can make himself.
“I was never involved in fights or anything when I was younger,” he says, adding with a laugh, “I was never part of a gang or anything. We had the land and cattle to tend. Farming and working and a load of other stuff to be doing – playing football and that. MMA is a total sport for me.”
Bringing together any and all martial arts, from boxing to wrestling and anything in between, the rules of MMA allows combatants to punch, kick, elbow and knee their opponents.
Fights, which also feature trips, throws and wrestling takedowns, take place in a cage as opposed to the traditional boxing ring to protect fighters from falling out when grappling. Chokes and joint locks are permitted, as is hitting a downed opponent.
It is this last aspect of the sport that causes many casual observers to curl their lips at its apparent ‘barbarity’, but grappling-based martial arts like BJJ – which emphasises fighting off one’s back – means a careless fighter could find an apparently dominant position reversed in a heartbeat.
The more important factor, however, is that the referee has the mandate to stop a contest at any time he considers a fighter is incapable of coherently defending himself. Being dazed and confused is not an option in MMA; the level of disorientation that would see the equivalent of a standing eight count in other combat sports is cause enough to stop the action.
Addressing the essential danger of MMA, Crosse is vigorous in its defence.
“Every sport has its dangers but the referees in this sport…they don’t let you get hurt. They’re there to protect you and they do. If they see you, for instance, in an arm bar (a joint lock that sees a fighter bend their opponent’s arm against the elbow joint) and they think your arm is going to pop and you don’t want to tap, they’ll stop the fight.
“This is an amateur fight just with head shots on the ground. There’s elbows to the body but you’re not allowed to use the point, you’re only allowed to open guard and make space. You can’t strike down with force,” he explains.
Neither of the lads know much about their opponents beyond their name and weight, but both are confidant and have solid game plans in mind.
“I’m excited and I’m a bit nervous but I think that’s all in my head,” says Flanagan. “Waiting for it since November, I just want it over with now and see how I get on.
“I’m going to try and keep it standing if he’s a grappler and if he’s a striker I’m going to try and take him down. I’m just going to know as soon as I look at him but I’m going to attack aggressively.”
Crosse also intends to keep things within his comfort zone. “I’m very comfortable with my wrestling so I have no problem taking it to the ground. I’m comfortable with the jiujitsu I’ve learned with John (Eustace). I’ve improved a good lot since I joined his club.
“John and all the guys at Fightsports have got me ready and Adam and Seamie and all the crew at Phoenix Kickboxing. They really put you through your paces. There’s no going in to hurt each other during training. You learn. They show you everything you need to get ready,” he concludes.
When the time comes and the cage door shuts, all that will be left for Thomas and Mikey to do is put their chins down, put their hands up and fight.
All the hard work is done. Now it’s time for the real fun to begin.