Will be in Sydney

[frogstyle]

Ill be in Sydney sometime in March. My mate, Tony Bonnello is fighting and I never miss one. Be sure to catch it on Foxtel.Any of you guys care to have beers at the Grand hotel flick me a PM.

[mangda]

Tony Bonello is an elite athlete who competes in a cage.

For the best part of 20 years the world light-heavyweight extreme fighting champion has been studying hand-to-hand combat, and his skills will be on show in Sydney tonight.

Little-known in Australia, extreme fighting - also known as ultimate fighting - has its heartlands in the United States, Latin America and Japan.

The fights, often denounced as "human cockfighting", take place in 10-metre octagonal cages before thousands of people and with very few rules.

The combatants can punch, kick, headbutt, strangle, throw, stomp, elbow and knee each other. The only prohibitions are on eye-gouging, biting and targeting the spine with elbow points.


The fight continues until someone is unconscious or unable to go on, but its participants insist it is less dangerous than boxing. They say that in boxing the focus is on "rocking the brain", and that for all their dislocated shoulders, broken ribs and cracked jaws, it is better that the blows are spread over the body.

Mr Bonello, a 29-year-old from Bondi, was crowned in December last year after beating former US Olympic wrestler John Moore in Miami, Florida.

The cage fight was stopped after two minutes, when Mr Bonello had his opponent pinned face-down beneath a barrage of elbows to the back of the head.

To prepare for the fight, Mr Bonello trained at extreme-fighting gyms in Los Angeles and Miami, and also spent many months in Panama, training with boxing superstar Roberto Duran.

"He was my mentor, he taught me how to basically fight. I've been going on and off there for five years now," Mr Bonello said.

Panamanian finishing-school came after a 16-year, worldwide apprenticeship in hand-to-hand combat that took Mr Bonello to Russian wrestling academies, Brazilian ju-jitsu gyms and Japanese karate dojos (schools).

"You name it, anything to do with any type of combat sport, I've flown to their country. I've seeked the best in the world, and I've trained with them," he said.

In a unification bout at the Masonic Centre tonight, Mr Bonello will clash with the unbeaten American cage veteran Mike Lindskog, 37, who holds an equivalent ultimate-fighting title under a different sanctioning body.

While Mr Bonello said he was fired up for the fight - "I love the fear, I thrive on it" - his more experienced opponent said age brought with it a mature and nuanced approach to fighting.

"Ten years ago I tried to get fired up: mean, full of piss and vinegar," Mr Lindskog said. "Now I'm a lot more relaxed. I go in there like [it's a] job I have to do. I tend to stay a lot more focused."

Due to a shortage of Octagons in Australia, tonight's fight will take place in a conventional boxing ring.

[Huey One Four]

Isnt that the K1 thing?

[Slybones]

I thought I'd read somewhere that the "Ultimate Fighting Championship" contest banned elbows when someone has their head on the ground. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Just curious, haven't seen a match for a long time. Seems legitimate to me, elbows are nasty, especially when your head has nowhere to go but further into the floor.

[Matau]

Frogstyle you have a PM

Matau

[mgran]

Isnt that the K1 thing?

K1 is basically Muay Thai rules without the elbows:
-Boxing hand techniques
-Knees in clinches
-Kicks with shins delivered to any part of body (except groin) and alot of kicks to the legs
-no ground fighting

Most of the Competitors are Muay Thai or Seido Karate type folks