Fight
Family, blood and legalized assault
(Dec. 1, 2011) Taneisha Kyle is 16 years old, a junior at Eureka High School, and she’s just been locked inside a cage with a woman who wants to kick her ass. Hundreds of amped spectators surround the chain-link octagon where the fighters have squared off.
“Let’s go, Taneisha!” one man yells above the rumbling din. “Get her! Get her!”
Kyle bounces on bare feet, shifting her weight from side to side, her golden, corn-rowed head lowered and gloved hands raised as she stares across the canvas at her opponent. Jamie Nevena, a tattooed 26-year-old from Union City, stares back. The surrounding overhead spotlights give each fighter and the referee six shadows apiece, which radiate from their feet like spokes on a wheel.
It’s the NorCal Fight Fest at Blue Lake Casino, a mixed martial arts (MMA) event where tickets sold for $90 a pop, and after four unremarkable matches and a tedious two-hour intermission, people are hungry for action. This, the only female fight of the night, has them pumped. Their shouts and whistles bounce off the massive metal awning overhead and spill over the beer booth, past the ambulance that’s parked on stand-by and into the enormous parking lot.
Kyle, just seconds away from her first MMA fight, slaps her thighs and swivels her arms. She has the solid build of a softball power hitter and her cherubic face — the eyes nervous but mouth set and determined — is locked on Nevena.
With three metallic clangs, the fight begins. As the crowd cheers, Nevena advances, her muscular shoulders hunched and lips bulging around her mouth-guard. She throws a series of sloppy punches at Kyle’s head, then kicks at her legs. Kyle goes for a wrestling-style take-down, and the two grapple, shove and stumble across the mat. Kyle pins her opponent, then sits upright and unleashes a flurry of punches — right, left, right, left, connecting with Nevena’s ears and face.
The crowd leaps to its feet and erupts in joyous shouts. One onlooker throws a hand over his mouth, laughing. “Oh shit!” he says. “Oh shit!”
Nevena bucks Kyle off, scrambles to her feet and throws a couple of punches down at Kyle, who’s landed on her back. But Kyle quickly swings a muscular thigh up behind Nevena’s neck and wraps both legs around her opponent, snaring her head and left arm. When Nevena rolls out of it, Kyle seizes the arm, pins it to her own chest and arches her back, trying to bend the elbow the way it’s not supposed to bend.
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44th Annual Kinetic Grand Championship Race
STAFF PICK / events, art, outdoors, sports, for kids, free / 9 a.m.-6 p.m. A 3-day, 42-mile kinetic sculpture race over land, sand, mud and water! LeMans start at the Noon Whistle on the Arcata Plaza. Follow the race through Manila, Eureka and into Ferndale on Memorial Day for the Glorious Finish. kineticgrandchampionship.com. 889-3024.
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16 Comments
Comment / By Anonymous / Dec. 1, 10:43 a.m.
God help us when the U.S. runs out of enemies again.
Comment / By me / Dec. 1, 12:09 p.m.
Wouldn’t this be battery, not assault?
Comment / By Ryan Burns / Dec. 1, 2:31 p.m.
Both, I think. Good call.
Comment / By Mitch / Dec. 1, 2:43 p.m.
Empires decline.
What’s next, televised executions? Wasn’t that already in a movie or TV parody of our dystopian future?
Here’s an idea for the promoters: offer $50 tickets and $200 tickets, and allow anyone paying $200 to take a free punch at anyone in the $50 section.
If that works, perhaps a new $100,000 ticket might include the right to light the promoter on fire.
Comment / By J. Alora / Dec. 1, 3:17 p.m.
Whatever. People have fought for sport since before recorded history. More people have died running marathons than competing in MMA fights. Boxing is also more dangerous, as it’s the repeated blows to the head that cause the damage. Demonizing MMA (which is a sport I don’t even watch) is silly.
Comment / By Walt / Dec. 1, 8:47 p.m.
So this is OK with CWS and the DA? Next will they sell seats to see 3rd grade girls duking it out?
Comment / By brian / Dec. 2, 8:47 a.m.
You might be on to something Mitch. Let me be the first to offer to buy Kim Starr a $50 ticket……..
Comment / By unbelievable / Dec. 2, 1:49 p.m.
And “Dad” trains and is in the corner? A 16yo gladiator? Really? This is bad nature AND nurture. And spectators? If you think you all are above this spectacle, let me just tell you that you’re sicker than the combatants…
Comment / By Clark / Dec. 2, 2:51 p.m.
C’mon we’re long past the dark ages of MMA. You point out four people and identify them as MMA practitioners. I can point out More than that, in more sports, that have done equal to worse things. Jarrid Wyatt didn’t kill someone cause of mma and anger. He killed him cause he was having a bad reaction to drugs. Drugs! Not mma. Of THOUSANDS of people who for mma, practice mma, are important people of mma, you pick out four. What about the thousands that are doing good things? Or do they just go on the back burner? Have you ever heard of the SuperKid?? He is only respectful, and polite, and soft spoken. A little kid came up to him, seconds before a fight, and asked him for an autograph. And with out hesitation he smiled, took a picture, and gave the kid a signature. He wasn’t rude he wasn’t cocky, just a great guy. He beat his opponent and help him up right after the fight. That’s honor, that’s respect. What do people who spectate and speculate know about such things?
Comment / By Eveline / Dec. 4, 5:24 p.m.
Lighting the promoter on Fire is a clever suggestion and it made me laugh. However I wouldn’t induce my delicate senses to endure this idiotic spectacle and immature spectators for a million US$$$$.
Comment / By Sky / Dec. 4, 8:22 p.m.
I thought it a beautiful thing that a father and daughter could bond through martial arts. It is a sad state of affairs when a healthy parent/child relationship is demonized because of the sport they choose to involve themselves in. I see nothing wrong with a loving family that can feasibly stand up for themselves with no weapons other than their own bodies.
Remember, peaceniks, even Ghandi said that if you must choose between violence and cowardice, choose violence. Violence in and of itself is nothing to be hated. It is the misapplication of violence that is to be abhored. And whether you like it or not, if you rely on 911 in case of an emergency, you are participating in a violent soiciety. Better to take some martial arts training and rest easy then rely on a system that uses guns and tasers to insure tranquility. Hell, take your kid along. That way, if you are not at home, they can rest easy also. You might even bond in the process.
Comment / By Mitch / Dec. 6, 8:55 a.m.
Wow. I was going to debunk Sky 8:22’s Gandhi quote, but it’s true. Thank you Sky.
http://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm
This certainly paints Gandhi in a new light for me, just as the less quoted MLK would paint him in a less neutered light:
“I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence… I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.
“But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment. Forgiveness adorns a soldier…But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature….
Comment / By nick(mma promoter) / Dec. 7, 2:12 p.m.
lol! mitch wants to light me on fire?! you are a hypocrite.
Comment / By unbelievable / Dec. 8, 4:09 a.m.
@SKY - I think it’s a beautiful thing that spectators like you can gather with other tweakers and watch/spill blood together. That seperates AND ultimately diminishes your sector of the gene pool to (hopeful) extinction. If you think that’s a “healthy” parent-child relationship, you belong with incestuous sex offenders - also in denial about their relationships.
And how did you ever manage to mangle that Gandhi quote so far out of context? “Violence in and of itself is nothing to be hated - it is the misapplication of violence that is to be abhored?” If you don’t see this as a misapplication, you need to stop cutting your speed with Drano…dude!
Comment / By nick (mma promoter) / Dec. 8, 4:20 p.m.
ncj should be ashamed of themselves
Comment / By Buzz / Dec. 8, 5:14 p.m.
Thanks for the irony, Nick.