Dublin, Ireland
Cage Warriors 47 was always going to be massive; 2 title fights, 1 womens mma tournament fight as well as the usual top level match making. Wow! For this one, Mrs G was coming along too! I have to say at this point that my wife is not an MMA fan. She used to see me as her kind of Rocky, when I would roll home sporting all manner of bruising and swelling, but it all changed for reasons I wont go into right now. It was therefore a pretty big thing. As we were over in Dublin, she was going to pick up a travel guide and explore whatever it is ladies like to explore. Unfortunately, we were staying in a hotel in the middle of nowhere and that put paid to that plan!
After arriving at the hotel, the usual madness set in as the weigh ins were now done and I had to interview the fighters for the VTs. I actually really enjoy this part. I would have pretty much interviewed all of these guys before and this gives me an insight into their responses. There was a real variation of responses in these interviews; on the one hand you had Dave Hill dropping the 'f' bomb quite frequently and on the other David Bielkheden was pretty cagey. Sitting down with Rosi Sexton was good fun though...she's such an intelligent person and really considers every responses and certainly will not be led- I really like that.
Show morning brought about my first Irish incident just before breakfast. A couple of the crew advised me there was a short cut back to the main building through some bushes (we were quite bizarrely staying in shared houses a few minutes walk from the hotel). With time of the essence I thought I'd use this short cut, but I wished I never did. Y'see at 8am on showday I'm a little preoccupied and sensitive, so skidding on the dead corpse of a cat was not a great start. The smell will stay with me for a very long time- nasssssty! Despite this unfortunate incident I was able to hold down some food and get going on the voice overs for the VTs.
There are too many stand out points to this show, but I have to mention the 'commentary position'. Josh and I have really struggled with the commentary set ups recently. Overseas they have been a night mare and we were finally back in the neighbourhood where all would be perfect! It was so good to see we had volume controls, commentary mics, ear pieces and an english-speaking sound man who had a good sense of humour (that helps in live TV!). Things were going so well too until Cathal The Punisher Pendred started a take down from about 10m away and drove UFC vet- David Bielkheden, all the way across to our position which knocked one of the screens clean off the table! After our very nice sound man fellow put us back together we were good to go. The only thing that could upset our table for technical goodies would be me knocking over a can of Monster or fidgeting so bad I could kick a cable out of a socket. Well not quite. What could also happen is that after winning the featherweight world title, Notorious Conor McGregor could be so overcome with emotion he could climb the cage wall just above where we are sat and free fall onto our commentary set up en-route to celebrate with his loyal following. And, he did! In fact I took a head shot which knocked my cans off my head and more frustrating; my valuable caffeine based energy drink was hugely depleted after being shared across the commentary mixer! I wouldn't however change this moment for the world. What a true expression of someone's feelings after they have achieved their piece of history. And actually if Conor hadn't joined us in the commentary booth, I'm fairly confident a few of his enthusiastic supporters would have tried to get in the cage, which might not have been so cool! Congrats to Conor and DJ Linderman on their title wins, and a special mention has to go out to Aisling Daly, Rosi Sexton and Cathal Pendred who all made for an incredible night of action.