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.

Perfection

The UFC this weekend gave us a display of martial arts perfection with the Anderson Silva KO of Vitor Belfort via a front kick to the face.

Silva has won 13 fights in the UFC more than anyone ever in the UFC. He has beaten the best possible fighters in his weight division in Franklin, Henderson and Sonnen, no offense to my buddy Tim. In the meantime he has to entertain himself and he does it by trying to perfect his martial arts effectiveness. Instead of going out there and throwing 1000 techniques he found a single technique to do the job. This is the pinnacle of martial arts and people forget this because they want to be entertained.

Can just anyone do this? No. He can though. He is going to go down as the greatest fighter in MMA. So he looked to do a one hitter quitter in Belfort. He accomplished a feat rarely seen in fighting. So instead of marveling at the accomplishment people are berating him for it and having Steven Segal hanging around.

Here is the best MMA fighter in the world hanging out with an aged movie star THAT WE ALL IDOLIZED. So he has the means and fame to hang out with Segal who cares. Segal was able to open a dojo in Japan that stayed open. He was a white man in an Asian country teaching martial arts. Now he goes hang out with the best MMA fighter and people are talking shit. Norris trains with the Machados and uses them on his TV show is there a difference?