Cage fighting for blood, gold, kicks

BY SPENCER CAMPBELL
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER

ABINGDON, Va. – Daniel Crockett and Chico Santiago saunter away from their corners and touch gloved fists.

There’s a brief lull – a full second, maybe two – before Crockett launches a right kick.

Santiago grabs Crockett’s leg and they start falling. He lands a heavy right jab to Santiago’s face on the way down.

For the first time in more than two hours, no one fan can be heard over the roar of jeers and screams erupting from the seats.

The gladiators hit the floor of the cage – Crockett’s on top, then Santiago’s on top, then Crockett’s on top again.

Santiago pins his challenger’s leg beneath him in a vise-lock grip. Crockett’s knee is on the wrong side of Santiago’s torso, bent too many degrees past its anatomically intended angle.

It looks like Crockett’s leg is about to snap in two, but he frees himself and mounts Santiago’s back.

Against the cage’s fencing, Crockett begins heaving haymakers on the champ’s skull. Right, left, right – a machine.

The crowd nearest this side of the cage – so close they can see the purple bruise under Crockett’s eye and hear the pop of fist on bone – jump to their feet, the decibel level blowing past chaos.

Santiago’s guard drops. The ref throws his hands out wide.

Crockett jumps to his feet and almost buckles from the pain shooting through his knee.

A cage girl in a black bikini grabs the title belt and climbs into the cage. Near tears, she screams to no one and everyone, “That’s my brother! That’s my freaking brother!”

On Saturday night at the Washington County Fairgrounds, Ruckus in the Cage – a Tri-Cities mixed-martial arts exhibition for amateur fighters – crowned a new heavyweight champion. 

In less than one round, Crockett became the baddest man in all the Tri-Cities.

120 seconds. That’s all it took.

Right?

5:51 p.m., Friday, about 24 hours before the bout

The house that Ricky Bouck and Crockett share with three other guys in Blountville, Tenn., is a bachelor’s dream.

The living room is mixed-matched couches, a gun safe and a huge flat-panel TV.

Bouck’s and Crockett’s favorite part of the house, however, isn’t inside. On the back porch the pair – both of them fighters at Bristol’s Absolute Jiu Jitsu – have assembled a homemade training facility.

Bouck, 25, grew up in Bristol, Va., and wrestled at John S. Battle High School. The only sign of wear from his years spent fighting are cauliflowered ears.

But his personality betrays a fighter’s countenance. When asked about his past, unsanctioned fights, he mutters, “No comment.”

Crockett, on the other hand, is always laughing. It’s the perfect juxtaposition for a 24-year-old wad of muscle and past state wrestling champion at Rural Retreat High School. 

Both came to Absolute almost two years ago. They credit most of their successes in local MMA fights – Bouck is Ruckus’ current welterweight champ and Crockett will be the heavyweight title holder in a little more than 24 hours – to Absolute.

They spend almost 20 hours a week here in the backyard or at Absolute’s gym, having sworn off the smoke and the drink (mostly), training for glory.

“We’re always safe out here,” Crockett said. “We ain’t going to try to have any injury on ourselves or our partners.”

“Yeah, but a black eye ain’t an injury,” Bouck says, cutting in.

“No,” agrees Crockett. “A black eye is a requirement sometimes.”

1:47 p.m. Saturday

At the end of Kentucky Avenue in Bristol, Tenn., sits Dee Smith’s Absolute Jiu Jitsu.

The outside looks like a tool shed, and the metal walls can’t contain the sound of skin meeting skin. Inside, the air is dense with sweat as Smith’s fighters ready themselves for tonight’s Ruckus.

Smith has six students fighting tonight in less that seven hours, and still has them sparring.

“Some of these guys have pounds to lose,” explains Smith. “They also need to lose some anxiety. It’s pretty intense to get into a cage in front of your friends, family and co-workers to do some combat.”

Nerves can do strange things to a fighter.

“Man, I cried tears when I won my state title,” Crockett says after the workout.

“Yeah,” says Wes Williams, a teammate at Absolute. “I know when I’ve been fighting, I’ve felt myself start to cry and then it’s back to ‘grrrr,’ and then back to [crying].”

Bouck spent the afternoon practice launching himself at his partner, taking him to the mat in a flash of speed and technique.

Now he sits quietly in a chair just off the training area.

“I’ll talk to Crockett before a fight,” he says. “I just don’t talk too much.”

As they head out of the gym’s door to the weigh-in, Crockett and Bouck pass a picture of themselves at this year’s Caged Chaos. It’s obvious both won their fights only by the trophies they carry. Other than the hardware, they both stare grimly back at the camera, a mixture of hatred and ambivalence on their faces.

3:10 p.m., Saturday

The line of cars waiting to enter the Fairgrounds stretches from the gate, down a 200-yard entranceway and almost into the street.

As the Absolute boys wait for the gates to be unlocked, Smith leans back against his Nissan X-Terra.

Smith, 33, went to California in 1994 to find out what this jiu jitsu thing was all about. He told his dad he’d be back in a few months.

Two years later, he came back to Bristol and opened up Absolute. Smith struggled mightily for clients until MMA began sweeping the country. The Tri-Cities was not impervious to the sport’s charms, and soon his client list doubled.

Teams have sprouted across the Tri-Cities, and Bristol Motor Speedway has approached Smith about promoting some fights. Even the King College wrestling team has a fight club.

Chris Smith, Ruckus’ promoter, arrives in a black Cadillac Escalade and zooms to the front of the queue. 

Dee Smith, no relation, says Chris Smith was the Tri-Cities’ first organizer of MMA fights. Chris now has competition from multiple rivals, although his events still draw the highest attendance.

“He’s all right,” says Dee, Absolute’s owner. “He’s motivated by the green, while a lot of these fighters are motivated by love of fighting. But he’s OK.”

The expansion of MMA in the area also means that more and more untrained fighters are trying to be the next Chuck Liddell, a national icon in the sport.

At tonight’s event, Dee says, there are probably only 10 trained fighters out of the 60 slated to rumble. 

The gates open, the line starts to move and Dee climbs into his SUV.

“But, it’s good. If it wasn’t for the fight I don’t know where a lot of these kids would be tonight,” Dee says.

The actual weigh-in offers none of the excitement of a Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis showdown.

When Santiago shows up, Crockett lets out a quiet scream: “My guy’s here. Ahhh!”

Crockett said the night before that if a guy looks like a fighter, he’s probably not a fighter. If that holds true, Crockett should have no trouble tonight.

Rico’s at least 6-foot-3, 226 pounds to Crockett’s 220, and when he disrobes, his body is a graffiti-streaked monument of terrifying tattoos.

If Crockett is worried, the only symptom of it is his blood pressure. When the paramedic checks it, the needle points a blip higher than normal.

“Title fight tonight,” he explains.

8:34 p.m. Saturday

The Fairgrounds, once a flimsy barn, now has a circular cage in its center with hundreds of seats surrounding it.

The only lights that remain on are near the entrance and over the cage.

A huge projection screen near the back gives fans a giant-sized view of the cage.

Bouck stands behind this screen watching a fighter get locked into an arm-bar.

He and Crockett are difficult to track during the fight. One second they’re sitting quietly against the back wall, the next they’re gone.

Bouck, still staring up at the screen, starts talking about all the fights he used to pick as a younger man.

Even in his first MMA bout, he was so jacked up on anger and testosterone that after winning in three rounds, he puked his guts out.

Something about the training has calmed his mind, he says. Recently, at a local bar he was helping pry two brawling women apart when, “some fat guy sucker-punched me in the head.”

Old Ricky would’ve ground the guy into paste. New Ricky laughed it off.

“Quiet things,” Bouck says. “Fighters don’t want to be bothered.”

9:35 p.m. Saturday

“Here it is, folks!” the announcer rages. “The welterweight championship! Let’s give it up for Ricky Bouck!”

Waiting out the last two fights, Bouck and Crockett have been circling an empty part of the Fairgrounds throwing punches, stutter-stepping, always moving.

Crockett fights immediately after Bouck.

Bouck couldn’t stop twitching and Crockett kept punching himself in the face.

Even now, as he feels his intro music tear through his body – his own personal soundtrack of domination – Bouck jabs, jabs, jabs; jumps, jumps, jumps; shakes his head side to side.

And then he’s off – charging toward the ring with the Absolute posse at his back, his opponent, Nick Blessor, waiting for him – bottled hate in his eyes.

2:15 a.m. Sunday

“Chico, who?” is the battle cry as team Absolute poses for a picture on one of the mismatched couches.

After every bout, the team gets together to revel in all of the sins training won’t allow. Many tagalongs have come to the Blountville house to assist them in their effort.

There are beautiful Radford University ladies dancing on the coffee table; the sounds of the Beastie Boys blaring through the speakers; a cemetery of Natural Light cans littering every flat surface; a keg stand or two going on in the backyard. 

“I want to sleep with Dee!” screams another fighter, and while he might be overstating it, Smith does deserve some credit.

His team went 6-0 at Ruckus, and the only fight that reached three rounds was Bouck’s.

Bouck won, but Blessor proved tougher than he’d imagined. He was never in any danger of losing his belt, grounding Blessor with a series of chokes and head punches, but Blessor wouldn’t quit.

After his fight, Bouck was having trouble getting his cup out of his pants. The paramedics think he broke his right hand during the bout.

It didn’t seem to faze him, though.

He smiled broadly and said, “See? I told you [the fans] go crazy for Crockett and me.”

And they did. But maybe more so for Crockett.

“Yeah,” Bouck says, pulling a black hoodie over his head. “I remember when I won it. I went crazy.”

Defending the title has become more of a relief than a celebration. When you’re the champ, people expect you to tap out your opponent. If you tap him out in two rounds, they want one round. If you get him out in one round, they want seconds.

Crockett is worse off than Bouck. He limps around the party with a soft cast on his right leg and a swollen left eye that every girl at the party examines in horrific glee.

His sister won the cage girl contest at Ruckus and took home $1,000. All she had to do was wear a bikini and look fabulous.

Crockett spent two years getting choked in his free time and probably tore up his knee for a while. And all he took home was the belt he is currently wearing.

“Yeah, but I’d take this,” he says, fingering the gold lettering on the front on the belt. “I know it’s not worth a lot. But it is. To me.”

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