Josh Kinser in the Hearald Times
 

BLOOMINGTON — An 18-year-old man holds out a hand wrapped in gauze. The hand trembles, but a cageside attendant steadies it when he shoves a four-ounce, fingerless glove tight over the gauze and up onto the wrist. The glove is taped on; the Velcro straps wouldn’t be enough.

Once in the cage, the referee has some questions:

“Mouthpiece?”

The soon to be fighter retracts his lips and there is the rubber guard, blue and slippery.

“Cup?”

The young man knocks his knuckles against his groin and the cup pop, pop, pops.

“Are you ready?”

He is ready, or at least shakes his head yes.

Ready or not, an air horn honks and 700 people in the AmVets building on Airport Road throw up a raucous cheer. The teenage fighter, in blue shorts, touches gloves with another pugilist in the center of the cage and a struggle for dominance is sparked.

Every other month, Elite Cage Fighting, a mixed martial arts school and promotional organization from Indianapolis, rents out the building, bolts together a black cage with a soft mat and squares off 20 or so amateur mixed martial artists, many of whom are chasing a dream of professional fighting.

The company alternates from Bloomington to the Indy fairgrounds. Several fighters training and living in Bloomington, and some even farther south, was encouragement to the owners of ECF, Gary Hoyd and Phil Walsh, to set up local matches.

It was a good decision: Since November 2006, each event has been a packed house.

On a recent Saturday night, most of the fights were over in the first round, usually with a choke hold and usually after a couple of tense minutes of quasi-striking.

For all the chain-link and tattoos, most of the fights end with no damage done to either fighter.

A strong local, Josh Kinser, answered any questions of validity when he took on Roneze McGrady, from Indianapolis, a 6-foot, 1-inch former judo player and boxer. Kinser, who trains at Monroe County Martial Arts and the Iron Pit Gym, took a couple of jabs on his way in, but once he had upper body control of the taller fighter, a slam to the mat followed and by the second round, a TKO victory.

“Not sure when, but yes, I definitely will be a professional fighter. It’s a matter of time and experience. When the time is right, I’ll make the move,” Kinser said, after the fight. “This is my dream.”

Not the same tone as Ray Dotson, of Crawfordsville, who trains with Darlington Fighting Systems.

A half hour before his match, Dotson was working off some jitters with pushups in the grass.

“When I first got here at noon, I was thinking I just wanted to get in the cage and get my first loss and get the hell out of here. I was scared,” Dotson said, bundled up in a sweatshirt to keep his skin and muscles warm. “I told a cop a while ago that this will be the first time in six years where I get to punch someone and not have to run from the police.”

When Dotson finally walked into his first cage match, his eyes showed he was nervous, but he did his job and dispatched his opponent in the first round.

Some fighters sign up to punch someone in the face and some are there to follow their dreams. The diversity of the combatants results in an eclectic audience willing to shell out $20 to $50 for a ticket.

“None of us have ever been,” said Stacey Mills, from Bedford. She and three girlfriends, glammed up and dressed for a night of fun, made the trip when they saw a sign posted in Bloomington. “We hope it’s a party.”

Jenny Raff, herself a student of the martial arts, and in fact a recent recipient of a PhD from Indiana University, has different reasons to get so close to a sport considered barbaric by many.

“Why am I here? There are a lot of reasons, I think. My training partners fight and I just enjoy it. But I guess when I really consider it, I like mixed martial arts because it pushes me out of my comfort zone. It challenges me in a way that nothing else really can,” Raff said.

It’s a party to some and an arena of self-improvement for others, but for sure, come Nov. 22, at 7 p.m. folks will line up outside the AmVets building, paying their price for tickets to the show.

Some will come for the $2 beer and blood and some will come to climb out of their comfort zone