Fighters at CageFest 4 do whatever it takes to win

By Carrie White

Correspondent

Boxers, as Muhammad Ali put it, float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Mixed martial arts fighters also have to kick like a horse, pounce like a cat and grapple like a gorilla.

Chris Wiatt, one of the founders of CPW Promotions, which holds mixed martial arts fights in the region, said, "MMA is not two people chicken fighting in a cage. It's not a blood sport, although in the beginning it was billed as one. Today, though, these are highly trained athletes who are in the gym five to seven days a week. It's the fastest-growing sport in the world."

While there's no way to verify that claim, there's no denying that MMA has become a big-time business. The UFC, or Ultimate Fighting Championship, is the U.S. organization that promotes professional MMA events. Its fights are broadcast on cable television, including Spike TV and pay-per-view. The sport has come a long way since the early 1990s when the UFC held no-holds-barred tournaments to see who from the various forms of martial arts was the best fighter.

The bloody battling was eventually refined, somewhat, and rules were developed to make the sport more acceptable to regulatory agencies and wider audiences. The fighters are matched according to weight and fight in a ring enclosed by a chain-linked fence. The fight ends when someone is knocked out or submits due to painful holds, which is called tapping out.

"We are competitors, not street fighters," said Arthur Rofi, an MMA fighter from New Jersey with a 12-0 amateur record. He will compete in CageFest 4 on Saturday in Norfolk with about 30 other MMA fighters.

Wiatt, a varsity wrestling coach at Menchville High School in Newport News, got involved in MMA promotion after taking a trip to Las Vegas several years ago with Ricky Pierce, Gloucester's wrestling coach, and Simon Cooke, a wrestling colleague of Wiatt's and a competitive grappling fighter.

The men were impressed by the ultimate fighting matches they saw. They knew Hampton Roads had no sanctioned venue for MMA fights and seized the opportunity.

"There was nowhere for the fighters to fight," Wiatt said. "There are five to six academies (gyms where MMA fighters train) on the Southside, two on the Peninsula, and at least 10 in Richmond, but no one was promoting the fights. We bought equipment - lights, screens, a cage - and started promoting the sport. Cage-Fest 1 on Oct. 13, 2007, was at Hampton University, and we had 2,000 people. Then we partnered with Max Media, and at CageFest 3, that number had doubled."

CPW promotes amateur fights but plans to get into professional fights soon. Amateur fighters are not paid by the promoters but can accept sponsorships from businesses. Professional fighters are paid by the promoter to fight and win a purse, which can be quite large.

Stars include Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, who'll appear Wednesday on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," and Randy Couture, former UFC heavyweight champion.

"If you're Randy Couture, you can get $500,000 to fight and another $500,000 to win. And that's not counting sponsorships," Wiatt said.

Fighters will come from all over for the Norfolk event.

"In CageFest 1 and 3, one fighter - a soldier - used his leave to fly here from Iraq to fight. He couldn't get leave this time, but we have fighters from New York, South Carolina and Kentucky fighting," Wiatt said.

Rofi, the New Jersey fighter, is one of the headliners.

"It's his last amateur match," Wiatt said. "He usually fights at 155, but he is dropping weight to fight at 145. He's up against Mackens Semerzier, who is also undefeated. After this fight, they both are going pro."

Rofi said he is nervous about the fight but not scared. "I don't know any fighters who aren't nervous before a fight. If you aren't, you'll get hurt or be dead. If you're not nervous, you're not ready. But nervous and scared are two different things. Nervous is 99 percent a good thing."

Semerzier, a former wrestler and boxer who trains in Virginia Beach, said he isn't nervous at all: "I've been in so many competitions that I don't get nervous."

Rofi's strategy in the fight is fairly simple: "I'm going to fight my butt off!"

Semerzier's plan is to "kick him, knee him, elbow him - do whatever it takes to win."

Another headliner of the evening, George Sheppard, whom Wiatt coached at Menchville, is an All-American wrestler just finishing his freshman year at Campbellsville University in Kentucky.

Despite his success wrestling, he prefers MMA: "I like wrestling, obviously, but I like MMA and the fact that you get to use every type of fighting."

He's won all his fights with knockouts, but in this fight, he plans to "just see what the other guy can do and work around his strengths. But I am definitely looking for another big win."

So how does a fighter get "on the card"?

"Well, I get lots of calls and e-mails from fighters, but I screen them," Wiatt said. "Ninety percent of my fighters come from academies. If someone just calls and says he's been in 50 street fights and has won them all, I don't even consider letting him fight. If you don't understand jujitsu, boxing, wrestling and Muay Thai - which is a form of martial arts where they use elbows and knees a lot - you're going to get hurt."

Semerzier, a former Marine who trains at Linxx Academy of Martial Arts in Virginia Beach six days a week for several hours a day, said you can't just walk off the street and into the ring.

"On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I practice my stand-up for about 90 minutes. Then I work on jujitsu, which is like wrestling with submission moves. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I focus on MMA aspects - striking, takedowns, grappling - for about 2-1/2 hours. On Saturdays, I do about 90 minutes of sparring, some stretching, and then I hit Mount Trashmore and run. But it's either train like that or get beat up."

Many of the people training at the academies were high school or collegiate boxers or wrestlers, like Sheppard.

Rofi also wrestled in high school. "After high school, I never wanted to wrestle again. I was in the Navy, and one of my buddies was a boxer, and we started arguing about who was tougher, boxers or wrestlers. So we fought, and he knocked me out cold.

"He told me to start with MMA, but I thought it was street fighting, and I didn't want to do it. But I went to the gym and checked it out. I met Ken Parnham, my coach, there. We fought, and he tapped me out five times in 30 seconds. I told him, 'Look, I respect you, but I'm coming after you!' And I kept coming back and training, but I still haven't beaten him yet."

MMA, however, offers more of a future for fighters than wrestling does. Sheppard said: "I like being in front of a crowd. No one ever comes to wrestling. Now I'm kind of like a local celebrity with my friends."