The world of MMA is fascinating, it’s emotional, The Attendance, The great warriors fighting inside the cage, but you have to consider an MMA event as a real circus!
Yes, in fact, behind every event that seems so simple and beautiful to watch there is a lot of work, and each event offers a lot of work to the various categories, an event of a few hours requires preparation of months, all focused to entertain the audience and highlight the Stars who will give everything they have for the final victory.
Let’s start from the beginning: How to begin organizing an event? Promotions such as Centurion FC draw up a calendar at the beginning of each year, a series of events to be held in different locations and on different dates. The chosen day is always a weekend or a holiday, the frequency varies from one to four months.
Once the calendar has been drawn up, the event promoter begins to organize the logistics, which include equipment (cage, stage, lights, music), a location that meets the needs of the show in terms of capacity and is suitable for a sporting event, the medical sector, including an ambulance, and everything related to hospitality, i.e. bar and restaurant with their own service, a security team that will take care of the box office and internal order.
At the same time the match maker is in charge of searching for fighters and proposing the card for the evening; he will have the task of drawing up the various contracts and creating fights that can be balanced and spectacular, once the commitments are accepted, we move on to organize the travel for the athletes and their teams, the hotels and restaurants near them and often a gym to complete the training phases in the days leading up to the match. All this takes place 3 months before generally ,as at Centurion ,to give sufficient time for athletic and tactical preparations.
But his work does not end here, because the unexpected is always around the corner, in fact it may happen that some fighter may be injured during the preparation for the match or there is some problem, and he must promptly replace the athletes to avoid holes in the card.
But part of the show are some other essential figures, first of all the referees who have a great responsibility for the protection of the athletes and for the final judgment. The referee team is composed of a central referee (the one inside the cage) and 3 external judges who will carefully watch the fight to give the score and declare the winner. The figure of the Timekeeper covers the role of the one who makes the rounds start and end on time, administers the minute of rest between rounds, indicates with 3 blows of “clacker” (formed by two pieces of wood) that there are 10 seconds to the end of the round, and with a single blown of stadium spray horn the end of the round, sometimes he has an assistant.
The Cutman are those responsible for the functions of bandaging the hands of athletes and control them in case they were not “signed” by them, they are responsible for putting Vaseline before entering the cage, check the safety devices such as mouth guards and groin guards and that during the rounds are available to athletes to treat wounds cuts or bruises in the short time of one minute, allowing the match to continue safely.
Then there are the Ring Girls, the beauties that we see parading at the beginning and end of each round, a figure that was born in Las Vegas in 1965, during the boxing matches, to entertain the audience between rounds, from the idea of a famous promoter to let Girls in Sexy outfit Run with a sign, The Ring magazine published’ photos in its May 1965 issue decreeing the success of the idea and its spread.
Today, every event has its own Ring Girls who are highly anticipated by the male audience.
From the very beginning, all matches were presented as in the big events and hence the figure of the Ring Announcer. He is the one who captures the attention and entertains the audience, our presenter of the event, often dressed in a tuxedo, always elegant, calls the fighters into the arena and announces the winner.
But it doesn’t end there, a crucial part of the “dirty” work is behind the scenes, in fact the timing of the show is crucial, as well as the synchronism between the music, the exit of the athletes from the locker room to the cage, and the preparation time to accelerate the warm-up procedures for the following matches. This is taken care of by specializes staff and DJs who communicate via radio to make sure everything runs smoothly.
When the event is over, the job isn’t over…someone has to clean up!
