PORTLAND, Ore., April 18 -- It's not easy being Enoch Wilson.
Despite holding Sportfight's featherweight belt and being the hometown fighter, the crowd at the Rose Garden on Friday was almost uniform in its cheers for Wilson's Tacoma, Wash.-based challenger, Mike Joy.
But with Wilson's belt there for the taking in this main event championship fight, Joy was unable to make the crowd happy as Wilson definitively defended his title with a fourth round knockout.
Joy had his chances though. In the first round, he was able to neutralize Wilson's whirling jiu-jitsu style, and came close on a number of arm locks.
"Mike is a great competitor," Wilson said. "He fought tough tonight. He can take it to the ground well, too."
But in the second, Wilson was able to come back and take a little more control, gaining mount and smashing several fists to Joy's face.
Wilson was able to fight his style in the third: standing up and delivering twisting roundhouse blows.
In what turned out to be the final round of the fight, Wilson began to land his spinning strikes. Twenty-eight seconds into the fourth round, Joy dove fell face-first into a strong right knee that knocked him down and rendered him legless.
"I saw him slipping and went with the knee." Wilson said afterwards. "It caught him square in the face. It was kind of lucky I guess, but I was probably going to win the fight anyway."
Wilson, his hands raised, stood celebrating above the stunned Joy before the referee intervened.
Two fighters headed in opposite directions met in the co-main event, with Lyle Beerbohm emerging victorious in a 160-lb. catch-weight bout.
Beerbohm, famous for his day-glow streaked shorts -- made by his mother -- came into the fight undefeated, with his last three wins coming by way of guillotine and rear-naked chokes, including this month's XCC 6 win over Dave Knight. Nuno, on the other hand, was coming off a reality-check, title-forfeiting fight to Mike Pierce in the main event of Sportfight XXI last December.
At the first bell, Beerbohm ducked under a Nuno punch and dropped the former Sportfight title-holder to the floor. Beerbohm established position underneath Nuno for most of the first round, but was unable to fully clamp down a rear-naked choke. Near the end of the round, Nuno broke free and landed some fierce standing blows on Beerbohm, who was still on the mat.
The second round went much the same way, with Beerbohm establishing better wrestling position -- although not necessarily better position for the crowd, who found themselves staring at "Fancy Pants" in high definition on HDNet and on the big screens above the ring.
Nuno was able to get free again at the end of the round, but this time too late, as the bell rang before he could turn around and land a standing strike.
In the third, Nuno showed his dislike for Beerbohm's mother's handiwork by planting a kick firmly in the crotch of the fancy pants. Several missed roundhouse kicks by Nuno left him open to attacks, and Beerbohm took advantage, landing body blows and scoring points.
In the only fight of the night to go the distance, Lyle Beerbohm won a unanimous decision (29-27 three times). Nuno's low score reflected a docked point for a knee in the back in the third round that was just one of referee Hopi Jenkins controversial calls of the night.
Jenkins stepped in on four of the five fights he oversaw, and left at least two of those fighters feeling like they were declared the loser before the fight was clearly over.
Lightweights Dave Jensen and Tommy Truex came out of the ring with a fury, striking and dropping each other at breakneck speed.
Truex was game for the bout, standing his ground in the face of Jensen's late first-round barrage and waiting for openings to strike back. But Jensen threw too many strikes for Truex to block, and referee Jenkins was forced to step in for the fourth time of the night.
After taking a number of solid blows to the head, Truex was noticeably dazed, and Sportfight organizer Matt Lindland and Team Quest's resident jiu-jitsu expert Chris Wilson spent time patting the fighter -- from Greg Jackson's MMA in Albuquerque N.M. -- on the back.
Nathan Coy, freshly shaven after appearing at the weigh-in on Thursday with his standard between-fight Abraham Lincoln beard and short-cropped hair, took the fight to the mat in the second round, but only reluctantly.
Coy, a former All-American wrestler from Oregon State University, drew first contact on Jerrod Jones, who was fighting in his pro debut, with a swift kick in the first round. Coy appeared reluctant to use his grappling skills in the early going, perhaps hoping to prove that he is a more multi-dimensional fighter than previously suspected.
Coy spent much of the first round standing, dropping punishing right hands onto the face of a prone Jones. After a second round exchange left Coy off-balance, he appeared to decide that he had proved his striking point, immediately lifting Jones off his feet and dropping him to the mat. Coy quickly followed the drop by mounting Jones and delivering enough furious blows to force a tapout at 2:37 in the second round.
After the fight, Coy credited the win to his Team Quest trainers, calling them "the greatest in the world."
"I'm up here to win belts," he said, "[particularly] the Sportfight welterweight belt, which currently belongs to Mike Pierce. After tonight, I'm sure he'll fight me."
Pierce, who was waiting ringside, quickly jumped to the challenge, stepping into the ring in his street clothes and putting himself directly in Coy's face. He both accepted the fight and predicted a winner -- himself.
Lindland quickly inserted himself into the discussion, and made the fight official: Pierce's belt will be on the line at Sportfight XXIII on June 20.
Exciting young lightweight fighter Lance Wipf of Las Vegas was the better striker and arguably the better grappler in his bout against Arly George of Team Quest, but his inability to finish stretched the fight out to three rounds.
The inaction of the fight made the crowd restless -- the fighters were forced to break position and stand five times. At 4:23 in the third round the fight was stopped with Wipf a winner on strikes.
Super heavyweights Sunia Filikitonga and Thomas Naylor came together in a matchup of two men with a combined weight of 589 pounds. It was Filikitonga, of Houston, Texas, who used his fists to prove how hard and quickly fellow big man Naylor could fall.
Quickly pushing his opponent against the ropes, 300-pound Filikitonga landed crushing right after crushing right, causing referee Jenkins to step between fighters for the third time of the night. The record says that Thomas Naylor of Dallas lost his pro debut 41 seconds into his first round.
Josh Bennett entered the ring with a silly grin on his face, and Matt Kovacs did everything he could to wipe it off.
In what turned out to be a standing affair, these two heavyweights traded blows, with Kovacs showing himself to be the clearly superior striker, as well as having far better conditioning.
But referee Jenkins stepped in for the second controversial stopped fight of the night, giving Bennett the win 1:17 into the second round after he caught Kovacs with several knees to the body and a strong right-left combination. And as they did with the Dantibo-Krohn fight earlier (see below), the crowd showered their displeasure on Jenkins. All Kovacs could do was shake his head, believing that he could have rebounded and won the fight.
It took heavyweight Justin Moody just 48 seconds to slap a rear-naked choke on Andrew Pedersen.
Moody entered the ring with a big black cowboy hat, some desert-camouflaged shorts, and a superior plan to win the fight. Moody ducked under Pedersen's first advance and took the fight to the floor, where he used his superior conditioning and grappling skills. The 12 pounds Pedersen gave up to Moody at the weigh-in Thursday didn't help his cause either, as he was outweighed and overmatched in the short bout.
Two Oregonians collided in the first pro fight of the night, and they didn't disappoint. The bout, a middleweight matchup, featured first-time professional fighter Damian Dantibo going up against undefeated Jon Krohn of Team Quest.
Utilizing his conditioning, Dantibo rallied and found himself in a mounted position throwing fists and elbows at Krohn's face. As Krohn spun to avoid the blows, his defense fell, and referee Colby Jenkins stepped in to end the fight, much to the crowd's displeasure.
