Watching some semi-pro kick boxing fights was on the card for this past weekend. I’m always a fan of more active fights- knock outs and cuts make for very exciting fights. What I didn’t realize is that I’d be the one tending to the cut, and it wasn’t going to be in the ring.
It was a glorious event. A friend of my bf’s has been kick boxing doing muay thai for at least ten years now. It’s fun to go out and support him whenever he’s fighting close by. So a weekend adventure was planned for Hinckley, MN. There were about six fights on the card, $30 to get in and all the KOB you could drink. As a responsible driver, I refrained, but it made for some good people watching!! A few of the fights were a bit slow, but it picked up as the night went on. There were quite a few TKO’s (unfortunately, one of them was the friend that we went to watch). I’m a bit more accustomed to watching MMA fights where if some one gets kind of rocked, the other fighter pounces on them and finishes them off. The fights this weekend reminded me more of Punch Out! on the original Nintendo. When some one got knocked down (a la Glass Joe), they get a ten count to get back up and show that they weren’t still all loopy. It was pretty entertaining to watch the guys zig zag around the ring trying to pretend like they were fine. It’s like watching those Cops videos of the drunk drivers who can’t touch their own nose but swear they haven’t been drinking.
There was none of that in the last fight though. It was a rematch between this 47-year-old guy and another much younger fighter. I’d seen the old guy fight before and just barely eek out a win (likely due to home court advantage). I was worried for him this time. He’d already lost to his opponent once before and now he was a few years older. However, once the fight started, you could clearly see that Old Man Rivers still had it. He landed an awesome spinning back fist and then ended the fight with a spinning heel kick to the abdomen. I think he knocked the wind right out of the guy because he threw in the towel immediately. Good stuff.
After the fight we headed back to the hotel room to check up on our pup. Since we didn’t have a dog sitter, we found a pet friendly hotel and brought her along. She didn’t seem to be too thrilled with the idea, but we figured she’d just go to sleep. Off we went to get some dinner and hang out at the local bar with the fighters and associated groupies. About and hour later….the hotel calls to tell us that we need to come get our whining dog. Great. So I left my bf at the bar with his friends and headed back to the hotel to hang out with the dog and get some sleep.
Fast forward to 3:30 am. Some one is banging on the hotel room door, wakes me up out of dead sleep. Who is it? It’s me! Open the Door! I open the door to find my bf covered in blood….all down his face, soaking his shirt, his pants, it’s even on his shoes. Panic. Apparently some drunk, testosterone loaded, ego-maniac saw him standing within a 30 foot proximity to his wife outside the bar and went ape sh!t. Just came up out of nowhere and punched him in the eye. It caught him right on the ocular bone and split his eyelid wide open. In his slightly buzzed, blood drenched, state of shock, my bf thought the best plan was to send me to the gas station to get super glue so that we could glue is shut. Ugh…wooz. After cleaning most of the blood off his face, I tried to get closer to his eye and immediately started seeing stars. I had to sit down to catch my breath before I could even think about going to the store. Luckily, they didn’t have any glue at the gas station (seriously, coming back with super glue would have been a DISASTER). So I asked where the nearest ER was. Then, we loaded up the car and headed out. It took us about 20 minutes to get there, in the dark, in a tiny little town that neither of us had either been to. I had never been so glad to see these guys…..
They lead us straight to the ER where they promptly put him in a room and started cleaning him up. Then the doctor (a chilly dog smellin, weird scientist looking guy) came in and gave him four stitches all around his eye and sent us on our way.
By 4:30 am we started the drive back to Duluth. I guess the upside was that there was no traffic. Fantastic.
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