With the dust finally settling on the first ever $50,000 PrizeFighter tournament, all eyes are turning to September 7th in Glasgow, Scotland, where six welterweights will vie for the life-changing cash prize. As we await the full line up of PrizeFighters, Cage Warriors’ resident Play-by-Play man Brad Wharton takes a look back at what made the first one so special, and how the whole thing came together.
Tickets for CW 176 X PrizeFighter are available here!
“Who’s old enough to remember the PrizeFighter tournaments at York Hall?”
Ian Dean and I shared a sheepish glance.
It was with that question, from CW President Graham Boylan on a Zoom call earlier this year, that the PrizeFighter project got underway.
Where to begin? There’s a lot of nostalgia around one-night tournaments – and rightly so – but there’s also a myriad reasons they’re no longer a fixture of the sport we know and love today.
The days of no time limit, Vale Tudo-style one-nighters are long gone; today’s MMA is a much more sanitised and safe ‘sport’ version of Mixed Martial Arts.
Cage Warriors fighters are the most stringently tested in European MMA when it comes to medical standards; we’re the only promotion that uses SafeMMA’s highest standard of testing where we’re not being legally compelled to do so.
That in itself is a potential spanner in the works; fighters would have to pass a full post-fight medical before being allowed to progress to the next round.
What about the rules? You can’t really have elbows in a one-nighter. Three fights in one night is probably too much these days, without going the route of one-round bouts and running the risk of them not being valid for the athlete’s records.
Most importantly, how do you go about finding six guys who are brave, bold (or crazy) enough to risk it all on a tournament? Sure, there’s a huge reward; the winner comes out with two victories, a title shot and a big, comedy cheque for fifty grand…but in order for that to happen, everybody else has to lose.
No matter how hard you back yourself as a fighter, it’s a hell of a gamble.
So as the team got busy putting together the logistic of the thing, it became clear that we’d need a special cast of characters.
Thankfully, that’s exactly what we got.
The Prize Fighters
You can write the perfect script, but ultimately it’s the people in the roles that breathe life into a movie. Would The Godfather have been the same without Brando? Terminator without Arnie? Casablanca without Bogart?
Lucky for us, Ian Dean assembled an all-star cast of bantamweights; each bringing a unique style and story thread into the ensemble, each with different reasons for entering, all with their eyes on the prize.
Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising was former champion Michele Martignoni; the man who never lost his 135lb title. Coming off a blistering knockout in his return to the division he once ruled earlier in the year, it wasn’t inconceivable that the Italian could walk straight into a title shot, and straight into the UFC after that.
$50k for a night’s work though, is tough to turn down.
Then there was Shirzad Qadrian, the youngest man in the tournament at 23 and – having lost to fellow semi-finalist Weslley Maia – arguably the rank outsider.
Aidan Stephen, arguably the best grappler in the tournament. Alexander Loof, the heaviest hitter.
Alessandro Giordano, one of Italy’s top prospects looking to step out of Martignoni’s shadow as the country’s best unsigned bantamweight, and the aforementioned Maia, a young veteran coming off a career-best win looking to grasp his moment in the limelight.
The stage was set for chaos.
Organising Chaos
On top of all the hard work that goes into a fight card being the scenes, there’s the stuff that you guys see front of house. The media, the interviews, the promos, the previews…all the little appetite whetters that people want to turn up or tune in.
That’s where the tournament format is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, we’re used to promoting individual fights, but who knows what could happen with a PrizeFighter?
Things became a little clearer after the draw, but you still don’t know how things will play out. What if someone misses weight? What if there’s a fight week injury?
With the draw we got to see first hand the emotions of being selected for the bracket versus the reserve bout. The resilience of Giordano declaring that he was now fighting to prove who Italy’s best bantamweight was. The joy on Qadrian’s face knowing that he’d have a chance to avenge his loss to Maia.
It all brought us back to the thing that made tournaments great in the first place.
Chaos is a good thing, actually.
As a fan, the speculation around who might face who, who might beat who, and who’d take the whole thing. As a fighter, the madness of preparing while not knowing who you’re going to compete against. The nerves of waiting to be medically cleared and the long, lonely break in the changing rooms before making your second walk.
What a wild situation for all involved.
Seeing the whole thing come together on fight night was surreal. The weigh-ins had been and gone without major incident but the joy of not knowing how the dominos would fall had the team buzzing.
The fights were great; a classic between Stephen and Loof, a razor-close rematch between Maia and Qadrian and a ‘Fight of the Year’ contender reserve bout…but you can watch those for yourself on UFC Fight Pass.
This wasn’t just about the fights though, it was about something much, much more than a handful of tear-ups on a sweltering Saturday night in London.
This was about changing someone’s life.
Aidan is a new father, and 50k goes a long way in that regard. Qadrian wanted to reinvest the prize in future training overseas, and help his family back home. Maia wanted to get his mother a place on the beach. Loof wanted to buy his girlfriend some chairs.
And so, when Qadrian had made his way through six, five minute rounds for the right to hold that giant check above his head, the whole thing seemed worth it.
The biggest prize in CW history had been awarded and the course of a 23-year-old’s life changed forever.
And now, to Scotland.
Soon, another draw will be made and six welterweights will discover the course of their immediate fate.
After that, the chaos starts again. Weigh-ins, reserve fight, semi-finals, medicals and a fifty grand final to separate the man from the boys.
How will it happen? Who knows?
But if you tune in or turn up on September 7th, one thing is for sure: Lives will be changed again.