Dexter kickboxing event may be template for combat sports growth
DEXTER — Brighton Sawyer has been training in mixed martial arts for about five months.
Workouts for the 18-year-old Skowhegan native now living in Dover-Foxcroft had been based at Young’s MMA in Bangor until Friday night when he went public with his kickboxing skills during an amateur sparring event at the Factory One nightclub.
The event, a fundraiser for the Maine Veterans’ Fund, was believed to be the first of its kind in Maine, and while Sawyer was matched with a bigger opponent after his scheduled foe was unable to participate, the sparring session proved beneficial to him and popular with the 200 spectators at ringside.
“It was my first time sparring in front of a crowd, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought,” he said.
“At first I was nervous to go out in front of all those people, but once you hear everybody cheering and the music and all that, everything else just left my mind.”
Novice combat sports practitioners in Maine face the daunting challenge of making their competitive debuts in front of large crowds, particularly mixed martial arts fighters. The state’s primary MMA promotion, the Lewiston-based New England Fights, routinely attracts 2,000 or more fans to shows at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.
“What I got from all of my fighters here was, ‘I wasn’t as nervous as I thought,’” said Jon Pinette, a partner in the Choi Institute training facility of Portland who brought three students to the event. “Now if they can take that feeling and go into a bigger arena, as it is with any sport if you can relax you’re going to have much better technique, much better timing, and you’ll do better in your performance.
“This was a perfect venue for my new fighters to come in and be able to spar on a smaller scale.”
Safety was stressed during the eight matchups as some participants, including event organizer Josh Harvey of Corinth, are scheduled to compete at NEF’s April 23 MMA show.
Larger headgear and gloves were used as well as leg equipment designed to provide protection from kicks.
“I figured this was a great opportunity to get my feet wet and fight in front of a crowd for the first time,” said 28-year-old Glen Kasabian of Portland, who will make his MMA debut on the NEF card. “It was just a blast. It was over in a flash and super fun, and as it went on I felt a lot more comfortable.”
Geographic issues
The chance for new fighters to test themselves in front of a modest audience is one of several reasons such smaller exhibitions may become more frequent as combat sports continue to evolve in Maine.
Nearly all of the MMA shows in Maine since the state legalized the sport in 2009 have been held from Lewiston south, save for one NEF card in Bangor in 2013.
That leaves many fans who are resigned to traveling south to watch such Bangor-area favorites as Bruce Boyington, Ryan Sanders and Harvey longing for at least some exposure to combat sports more locally.
“I think this gives fans a chance to come out and see what we’re all about,” said Fred Lear, a former wrestler at John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor and a veteran of five amateur MMA fights who participated in the kickboxing exhibition. “The sport itself has a little bit of a negative connotation to it but that’s changing every day, and it’s events like this that will allow more people to see that.”
Mixed martial arts and professional boxing are staged under the oversight of the Maine Combat Sports Authority, a panel created in the aftermath of MMA’s legalization in the state.
Events such as the Dexter sparring sessions are free from MCSA control so long as they involve amateur participants, don’t involve judges — which means no winners or losers — and aren’t mixed martial arts, said Pinette, an authority member.
“We’re actually going backward, taking some of the disciplines away and only giving them two (kicks and strikes) that they can do,” he said. “But what it’s doing is cleaning up those two disciplines so you can be sharper and better and then put them into the bigger discipline, which is mixed martial arts.
“So it is taking a step backwards in a sense, but it’s to make going forward better.”
Smaller exhibitions also allow competitors from different training facilities the chance to work out together in a state where the talent is scattered over a wide area.
Four different gyms, Young’s MMA, the Choi Institute, Beserkers MMA of Rumford and The Outlet of Dexter, were represented at Friday’s event.
“We don’t have the depth in the gyms up here like they do in other places in the country because we don’t have the population,’’ said Harvey, who trains at Young’s MMA and will make his professional MMA debut in Lewiston on April 23.
“We might have five guys in the gym who are fighting at the same time but of those five guys only two are of the same weight so you’re always working with the same guys. Keeping these sparring events going and bringing guys together from different gyms is going to help us raise our level.”
Individual fighters often travel great distances to offset the lack of training partners at their own gyms, almost to the point in some cases of creating a ‘Maine against the World’ attitude.
“Things like this are going to bring our clubs together,” said Young’s MMA co-owner Chris Young. “We’re competing against places like Massachusetts where the schools have a lot bigger population to draw from, so it’s important to have these opportunities because it’s really going to bring our community together instead of us always fighting against each other. We’re excited about things like this.”
The business side
While there is growing cooperation among the state’s gyms, there’s also an ongoing battle for economic stability — and some in more northern locales see the lack of public events or formal shows in their area as detrimental to attracting new business.
“In the gyms surrounding Lewiston where the fights are, their numbers are up,” said Harvey. “Not just fighter numbers but numbers as far as fitness and total participants. Those gyms are doing well because more people are aware they’re there. We have gyms in this area of the woods and people don’t even know they exist, so having people be able to spar here like this lets everyone know we are here and they can do this in front of their friends and family.
“Take The Outlet and Shatterproof Combat Club right here in Dexter, this is going to be good for them. I’ve already had three or four people ask where they can do this and I told them there’s a gym three or four miles down the road.”
Gym operators anticipate similar exhibitions being held more frequently both in Dexter and beyond.
“I think it’s a great concept,” said Pinette. “If you look at where the great majority of the schools are, between Bangor and Portland, and you find three different venues and put on between three and six of these shows a year bouncing from those three venues and include everybody who wants to be part of it, you’re going to watch Maine’s mixed martial artists grow better as a whole.”
There also is a complementary relationship between such exhibitions and formal MMA shows that may make the smaller events even more popular among more experienced competitors.
“We don’t want to be sparring too hard a week before a fight,” said Young. “Three weeks out is about when we start tapering off from hard sparring rounds, so this is a good opportunity to get in front of a crowd and test yourself against somebody who doesn’t train with you every day, which is important in letting you know how your game plan is progressing and how your skills are progressing.
“This is how we’re going to spread the sport. It’s tough to put on shows like NEF does all the time. Smaller shows like this can broaden the audience.”