WKA weekend 2024 included a night of MMA at Stellar Fights. The team was running from arena to arena finishing up Day 2 of the Kickboxing Tournament while getting Luke and Tristen ready for their fights.
Luke was up 1st against a tall and long opponent with varied experience between MMA, Kickboxing, and Grappling. At 18, only a few months removed from High School, Luke was facing a 25 year old man. It was a tall task but Luke was game.
The fight was a good exchange of back and forth striking with some solid wrestling from both. Luke landed hard and bloodied his opponent. Fighting through body shots and getting back to his feet from bad positions, Luke showed his real potential. He never quit, never broke no matter how hard it got. A well placed knee followed by some ground and pound forced the ref to stop the bout and ended the day for Luke.
Luke showed some real skill and the ability to fight through adversity. Much more upside after this than the loss demonstrates. At 18, the future is very bright for this young prospect.
The main event had Tristen stepping in to battle for the heavyweight championship. There is quite a bit to unpack here…
The bout started with Tristen being hesitant and giving away too much of the round. This gave the round to the champ.
Round 2 found Tristen relying on his wrestling to score multiple takedowns and solid positions. Round 2 to the challenger.
Round 3 was where we had to win in our minds to secure the victory. Tristen unloaded his gas tank with a solid round of pressure, takedowns, submission attempts, and ground n pound.
We were confident we won the fight… but then the other shoe dropped. It was a 5 round fight that nobody informed us about. To be clear, Delaware does not have an athletic commission which allows for them to operate without oversight. BUT, Amateur MMA fights are not legally more than 3 rds in almost any other state. Also, after 3 previous fights for Stellar at 3rds an affair, we had no reason to believe it would be different. Even at the rules meeting, the head official said all fights would be 3 rds… I guess everyone but us was told what was going on.
Rounds 4 and 5 were not Tristen’s rounds. To go from thinking it is over, to 2 more rds is a physical and mental hurdle that is extremely difficult to overcome. The adrenaline dump alone when you feel it is over is almost impossible to rise above…
Congrats to the champ for doing his job but he didn’t get an honest fight from Tristen because we were on 2 different levels of understanding the contest. We definitely did not have the best fight from Tristen no matter the length but we did win the 3 rd portion of the fight.
Lesson learned, we need to clarify everything going into fights where we don’t have athletic commissions or contracts. Tristen will be better for this and that is all that matters.