Fightville

Fightville

This is a film about the guys in Louisiana fight scene. The people of the film are Gil Guillory, fight promoter, Dustin Poirier, fighter, Albert Stainbeck, fighter, Tim Credeur, fighter and gym owner, Josh Artigue, trainer, and a multitude of other people from the area.

I was fortunate enough to be part of this process and will let you in on how this got started. Several years ago one of the fighters from the gym, Scott Sonnier, had an MMA match against Mike Goss. Mike was the subject of the acclaimed documentary, How to Fold a Flag.

Scott beat Mike in the match.

Mike then returned to Louisiana for another match and asked Scott if he could help him out. Scott offered to let Mike stay at his house and cornered him for his fight which was being filmed for the Flag documentary.

While screening the documentary the film maker, Micheal Tucker, explained this situation to the production company. They were so impressed by this that they told Micheal to go get the rest of the story about these crazy people in Louisiana. This is how the film was born.

Tucker came down to film an event with USA-MMA, a fight company owned by Gil Guillory. Dustin and Albert were fighting in the event. Tucker then asked to come to the gym to do some filming. This is where he got hooked on the idea. While filming he became exposed to the cast of characters that is Gladiators Academy Lafayette.

Over the course of a year Tucker would come down and film the gym and the events we were participating. We had a great time and Tucker loved every minute he was down here. Tucker used a very non-intrusive style of filming. He just hung out in the background and would scuttle about making sure to stay out of the way. He once described the filming process as being allowed to live with a pride of lions.

The film is a glimpse into the world of MMA fighting at the beginning level up to the big leagues. It shows how guys live, train, and fight.