For most average fans of mixed martial arts, this weekend was all about the UFC fights on ESPN featuring Frankie Edgar’s drop to bantamweight, and maybe the Bellator event on Friday featuring ‘greatest light heavyweight in the world’ (womp) Ryan Bader. But for all the hardcore kiddies on Twitter, there was another event building up some hype: Fight Circus, brought to you by live webcam porn streaming company CamSoda.
This isn’t CamSoda’s first venture in the MMA realm. In 2018 they held CamSoda Legends featuring Ricco Rodriguez and the artist formerly known as “Crazy Horse” Charles Bennett. It was pretty freakshow. But this time they’ve gone full freakshow squared times a million, teaming up with Full Metal Dojo promoter Jon Nutt in Thailand. And we know ‘freakshow’ gets thrown around a lot in MMA, but we can confirm this is the freakshow to end all freakshows (until Fight Circus 2, at least).
Take a look at the promo:
They really mixed the martial arts for this one with openweight bouts, pro vs. two joes, lethwei rules, bareknuckle MMA, hybrid boxing / muay thai / mma, and even a surprise woman vs. man grappling match cuz why not?
First, what undoubtedly drew you to this post: the two on one fights between “Bank & No Money” and Mikhail Vetrila.
Because Fight Circus is Fight Circus, Nutt decided the 2 on 1 fight deserved an immediate rematch. As in, immediately. Here we go again!
There was a fight where round 1 was boxing rules, round 2 was muay Thai rules, and round 3 was MMA rules.
It didn’t make it past the start of the second where one of the combatants realized he doesn’t enjoy getting kicked in the face.
Then there was the surprise woman vs. man grappling match, which ended with the man getting tapped via rear naked choke.
Here’s a Kyokushin vs Muay Thai bout which was actually kind of badass.
And here’s the bareknuckle lethwei fight between Po Chissakan and Nattarat Prempida that went pretty sideways.
Our favorite part of the main event between Steven Banks and Sam Cassidy:
Fight Circus winners get a sword (or in one case, a golden axe). Losers get a bong, which seems like a not great thing to be given in a country with seriously strict marijuana laws.
Here’s the results, care of Cory Braiterman. As you can tell, Fight Circus is more about the spectacle than the particular athletes involved, so we don’t have the names of everyone involved or finish times. We’ll update whenever Full Metal Dojo decides the results are important:
Steven Banks def. Sam Cassidy (HW Muay Thai) decision
Hidetaka Arato def. (Openweight MMA) decision
Bank & No Money vs. Mikhail Vetrila (2 vs. 1 Muay Thai) first fight via RNC, instant rematch via TKO (20 unanswered punches)
Fabiano Hawthorne def. Kyoken (Lethwei) KO (elbow)
Chitnuphong Sommuttiram def. Tang Mo (Openweight Kickboxing) TKO head kick
Po Chissakan def. Nattarat Prempida (Lethwei) decision
Two Buddies vs. A Pro (2 vs. 1 Muay Thai) fight did not happen (we got intergender grappling and kickfighting instead)
Woman beats man via Submission (RNC)
Kyoshukin karate guy beat the Muay Thai guy in kickfighting via TKO
Ali Mohammed def. Ryan Donnelly (Openweight MMA) via decision