BOCEK TAKES TOP SPOT AT KOTC CANADA

By Mike Russell

Given that the King of The Cage Canada’s Capital Chaos was held on a Wednesday night, an attendance number of 1,400 is a decent turnout for an MMA event in any location. Yet, since all of the fights but two didn’t make it past the first round, you’d think that the fight’s organizer Pete Rodley had imposed a 10:00 pm curfew.

That’s not to say that the fights weren’t exciting. There were some highlight reel submissions and some supreme displays of mixed martial artistry unlike the Robert Guertin Arena has ever seen -- a feather in the caps of Rodley and KOTC Canada President Ken Kupsch, who collaboratively put the event together.

The main event featured a showdown between Toronto, Ontario Brazilian jiu-jitsu phenom Mark Bocek, representing the East and Vancouver B.C.’s Garett Davis, an accomplished BJJ practitioner in his own right, representing the West.

Bocek proved why he is regarded as Canada’s top jiu-jitsu fighter. Controlling the fight from the opening stanza, Bocek put on a submission wrestling clinic. If his performance tonight was any indication of how he is to perform in the Abu Dhabi World Submission Championships in May, spectators at the event will need to stand up and pay attention.

A rising star in Canadian MMA, Bocek may already have outgrown the competition in Canada, save fighters like Sam Stout or Mark Hominick, who he recently listed as two of the top four fighters he would like to face in the coming months.

The co-main event featured a match between Saskatchewan Militech Fighter, Elmer Waterhen and Nova Scotia’s TJ Grant. The match would yield the number one contender in KOTC’s welterweight division, securing them a title shot in the near future.

Racking up a seven-second KO in his first KOTC Canada appearance, Waterhen, a former “Champion Fight Club” welterweight champion and “Tuffman Battle of the Battlefords” lightweight champion, was an odds on favorite to win. Grant, however, didn’t check the odds as he finished the fight via his submission of choice - the armbar. Grant has won five out of his last six fights by such means. The other he won by TKO.

Regardless of the means or the method, Grant is now the number-one contender to the vacant KOTC Canada welterweight title and will be facing a yet-to-be-named opponent for the title.

Here is a rundown of tonight’s fare:

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