Sunday, January 20, 2013

VFL MMA 1_19_13 Broad Avenue Brawlers

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1/19/2013 Jaffa Shrine, VFL MMA came back to Altoona to bring on an action packed night of kick boxing, boxing and MMA. The VFL promoter, Lionel, is a long time boxing trainer, so it isn’t uncommon to see some boxing matches at his shows. At this show there was 1 ammy Thai bout, then 2 pro boxing bouts, followed by a mixed card of ammy vs. pro MMA bouts.

The opening bout were the youngsters in the Thai bout. Roman Taylor KO Luke Hess in the 2nd.


They brought out an Altoona boxing favorite Spoon to fight Rocky Burch. The fight was ruled a draw, much to the chagrin of the crowd where many felt Spoon did enough to win the decision.


The second boxing bout was between PA’s Andres Taylor and Harvey Jolly. Jolly took a majority decision. Depending on who you spoke with during the evening their feelings on the decision were mixed.


There’s been a divide between boxing and MMA fans. I feel that the pace of MMA has largely taken something away from the boxing fan base. However; MMA stands for mixed-martial-arts. While boxing isn’t exactly thought of as a “martial art”, I would certainly say that it is an art and it is included in MMA (many MMA fighters have boxing backgrounds or whatever). A similar comparison would be this. I dislike watching college wrestling. However, wrestling is in MMA, and a big part of it. The included and excluded aspects of the sport could be what sways fans.

The evening opened with ammy MMA. Ryan Everhart defeated Jordan Haslerig in the 2nd. The Dr. stopped the fight due to cuts.


A female MMA fight featured Rachel Gray who defeated Melanie Bremer.

In a match between Curtis Link and Nick Kerr, Curtis link surprised the hell out of a lot of people with a triangle choke. Nick was a huge aggressor in the fight but Curtis, who you can’t count out, seen an opening and took it.

Brandon Lux defeated Scott Athey in the 3rd, his corner tossed in the towel. Scott has one thing that you can’t teach, and that’s heart. He absorbed one hell of a beating but came out to each round without hesitation.

Roman Swaner fought Paul Riggleman, and in between rounds the fight was stopped do to injury to Riggleman’s ribs.


The opening Pro MMA bout had Cory Propanz against Matt Dean. Propanz waited and baited Dean with a Triangle in Rd 1.


Altoona’s own Brett Shoenfelt scored a beautiful first round submission over Bobby Ferrier.

In the co-main of the evening Eli Garshnick defeated Donald Crawford Jr in the first via submission. After the fight Donald was quoted as saying that he thought Eli was going to stand with him. A experienced fighter in the group asked him if he did any research at all on Eli and asked him why he thought he would’ve stood and brawled.


In the main event of the evening, Holidaysburg’s own Charlie Brenneman defeated Eric Irvin in the 2nd by RNC. It was an exciting bout where Eric was having some luck on the feet (but to be fair, Charlie was as well) but as soon as Charlie wanted the fight to be fought horizontally rather than vertically, it was on the ground. Once on the ground Charlie maintained position, and worked “dirty wrestling” (my term for superior position allowing you to drop short punches and elbows AKA like dirty boxing) and punished Eric. The momentum he was able to generate in such a short space was remarkable as there were audible thuds when his strikes connected.

The full gallery is uploading to my website as I type this and should be completed before the evening is out. Here’s a few sample pictures to get you started. Thanks for reading and be sure to check back for my CPWC photos in Feb, and CDMMA photos in March.