09.21.09 MMA UNDERGROUND: UCL’S ‘CODE RED’ IN NYC

With mixed martial arts on the verge of being sanctioned in the state of New York, MMA journalist Jim Genia brings us The Truth: A Look Inside NYC’s Underground Fight Show, a point-blank look at a recent underground MMA show that took place somewhere in the greater New York City area. While bringing the sport to the most diehard fans of the sport, it stands to be all but eliminated once fixtures to license mixed martial arts are in place. Genia’s words and pictures are after the jump.

It’s Sunday, September 20th, and if anything seems out of place at this ghetto-rific boxing gym within the Five Boroughs, it’s the fact that the men in the ring aren’t just boxing. They’re kicking and grappling and doing their damnedest to make each other tap out. This is “Code Red”, the latest installment of the Underground Combat League – New York City’s longest-running unsanctioned mixed martial arts promotion – and though for most fight fans the weekend’s menu consisted of last night’s Mayweather vs. Marquez or UFC pay-per-view offerings, a select few “in the know” got a text telling them to come here, to this undisclosed location. The promise: all-out fighting.

“Fighters can make claims, but the Underground is the truth,” says Peter Storm, the promoter behind the UCL. His version of “Fight Club” has been alive and kicking since 2004. The rules are simple: no biting, no eye-gouging, no groin strikes and no fish-hooking. In Brazil it’s called “vale tudo” (Portuguese for “anything goes”). Here, on this Sunday afternoon in this boxing gym, it’s called fun.

Over a dozen fighters of various skill-levels and ability have converged. The action is nonstop. A big wrestler shoots for a takedown, his momentum carrying himself and his opponent through the ropes and onto the concrete floor outside the ring. A worn but sturdy 210-pound brawler named Kevin Wall out-strikes his 250-pound foe, beating on the bigger man, and stopping just short of executing a spine-removing Mortal Kombat-esque “Fatality!”

An Irish kid from Ronkonkoma slugs it out with a student from Ultimate Karate and winds up KO’d in a corner. And in the event’s best bout, a New Generation Karate representative named Chris Corr plays the role of relentless ground-and-pounder, depositing Doug “Lionheart” Ahammer onto the canvas to feed him fists, knees and elbows, rinsing and repeating for all three rounds. (Afterwards, Corr and Ahammer joke and smile and compare notes.) Throughout it all the crowd cheers, voicing its approval of this grassroots sampling of a sport most only ever see on television.

“Everybody comes to this league saying they’re undefeated, saying they did this and they did that, but when they get into the ring it’s a different story,” says Storm. With New York State on the cusp of legalizing MMA, the clock is ticking on his organization. Storm knows it. But until then, he promises to trudge on. So, too, do the fighters, many of whom are already planning to compete on the next card.

“Oh yeah,” says “Rage” Rivas, coach of the Brooklyn Fight Factory, a team that alternates training between the gym at Hunter College and his apartment. “My guys will be there,” he says. “Definitely.”

And that’s the truth. –Jim Genia