WCL: Out of the Octagon
By Eliot Dempsey Colorado Daily
Known by millions for his famous beard and his powerful kicks that would send any sane man running, Chuck Norris is a man who has shaped his life around martial arts and the need for man to witness hand-to-hand combat.
Up until this point, Norris has only been able to bring his brand of entertainment to fans through movies like “The Octagon”, “Delta Force”, or television shows such as “Walker, Texas Ranger.”
Until now.
Norris and his brainchild, the World Combat League, are a professional fighting league that will kick off its second season on Friday night at the Denver Coliseum.
Norris and the WCL will be holding a fight night with 24 fights featuring the four Western Conference teams, each with six fighters. One team debuting will be the Denver Fury, coached by Steve Alley and starring Jack “The Knife” Johnson, Colby “The Cobra” Snyder and Katie “Killer” Meehan.
Mixed martial arts, or MMA, have become all the rage in sports entertainment nowadays, with the UFC being the most well-known commodity. The World Combat League is a different animal altogether however, marketing themselves as combat martial arts, or CMA.
There are several differences between the two leagues. In the WCL, fighters are not allowed to grapple or fight on the ground at all, making the fights faster and more exciting than those found elsewhere, according to Norris and the WCL. “We’ve tried to make it more exciting than MMA,” said Norris.”The most exciting fighters are the stand up fighters like the ChuckLiddells. That is what I’ve done with the WCL.”
With that kind of full throttle action and no time for defense, the WCL had a 35 percent knockout rate last season. Another interesting difference is that the UFC has only individual fighters while the WCL has eight teams in eight different cities, and each team consists of one female fighter and five male fighters.
“When I started the league last year, I got emails from male fighters who were interested, then I started getting email from girls, so we put a girl on each team. You only have three minutes and at the first match in those three minutes all you saw was feet and hands and they stole the show,” said Norris. “We had girls become superstars, now we have five guys and one girl on each of the eight teams now, four West Coast, four East Coast. The goal is to have 24 teams in the U.S., Asia, the Middle East and Europe. We would have the true World Championship”
Fights are decided either by knockout, or by a panel of judges after each three minute bout. After each of the six fighters on each team has fought, there is a half-time break and then each fight that was not decided by a knockout or tko will continue to decide a winner.
One of the stars of the WCL is Raymond Daniels of the L.A. Stars.
“A lot of our fighters are traditional martial artists. Daniels, from L.A. has fought all over the world. I asked him, ‘Are you ready for a full contact career?’ and he said ‘I ‘m ready Mr. Norris, I’m going to knock most of my opponents out.‘” said Norris. “In his first fight they are going at it, Raymond does a full spin kick and knocks the guy cold. His legs are like bullets, they are so fast you can hardly see them.”
Unfortunately for all those Chuck Norris fans out there, the man himself is retired from professional fighting and is firm in his role as the WCL promoter, leaving the fighting to the teams. But he will be in attendance on Friday night. “I’ve been a fighter for 15 years, now my motivation is to make a career for these young athletes, that is my motivation, to give these young people a chance to make a living at what I did and loved doing,” said Norris.
For more information on the WCL, be sure to visit www.worldcombatleague.com. For ticket information to Friday night’s event at 7 p.m. at the Denver Coliseum, see Ticketmaster. Students can show their student i.d.s to get half off the price of admission.
