Cage fighting in Malaysia

 Today, in celebration of Nicks birthday, and in the interest of doing something a bit more fun than a standard night out drinking somewhere expensive, we crammed ourselves into a minibus and made the hour long trek up to the north of Singapore, across the boarder (through some very annoying check points) and up to JB, the nearest (and grottiest) Malaysian town to Singapore for what might be one of the most random nights in Asia so far.

We pulled up outside Sentosa Mall, a very dirty looking shopping mall, and took the service lift up to the eighth floor (which felt like the opening scenes from a horror film), ending up on the roof.

            On the roof we found a crowd of maybe 150 people, a temporarily erected cage, and a selection of terrifying looking people dressed ready to beat each other. To one side there was a person manning a camp stove providing local curry, and another person manning the bar (an ice bucket with Budweiser beer bottles). Plastic school chairs were lined up in four rows around the edge of the ring, and you had to fight for a seat, and if you didn’t get a seat you had to stand or sit on the floor.

            Once the ten of us had armed ourselves with beer and snacks we managed to eventually nab just about enough chairs to watch the next few crazy hours unfold.

First up were the kickboxing guys, who operated to some vaguely understandable rules, although I will not say for one moment that it made for easy watching. Following the kick-boxers were the MMA fights. If I thought that the kickboxing was tricky to watch, it was nothing compared to these guys.

            MMA has no rules. The fighters use a combination of whatever martial arts they like, and they just go at each other until someone wins. You win either by knocking out your opponent, but forcing them to resigning, or based on points if you both make it through the three timed rounds. We only saw one pair make it through all three rounds, and it was clear that they were friends out of the ring. Hopefully that gives you an idea of just how mental a scene some of the rounds were. I won’t go into too much detail, but let’s just say that you can understand why Monica in Friends stops dating the lovely millionaire when he decides to take up MMA and is rubbish at it!