The second part in an ongoing series documenting Sarah Kaufman’s fight at AFC 5.
Read part one of the ZUMA Fight Journal
We pull in next to Kaufman’s vehicle, a source of many jokes, but also a sign of the humility that permeates the team. The former Strikeforce champion drives a not-quite beat up Pontiac Firefly from somewhere between 1997 and 2001, and has no designs on upgrading.
She’s staying at Zugec’s for this fight, maintaining a small piece of being on the road despite fighting in her hometown for the first time.
We eat, talk about the Food Network and Jackson’s constant travel schedule before the coaches retire and I hit the couch to compile my thoughts on the afternoon. An hour later, Kaufman comes down the stairs carrying her MacBook, waves and asks where everyone is in a whisper that careens off the high ceilings and draws a “that was loud” look from tonight’s main attraction.
She sits and watches an episode of Modern Family, going over her ticket sales figures and texting on her iPhone, her braided hair the only indication that tonight is any different from a normal Saturday night in Victoria.
It’s not long before the house is buzzing with energy.
Zugec and Jackson emerge from their naps, the former still looking a little sleepy as he greets his wife, the latter with a Five Hour Energy shot in his hand and a smile on his face. Naps aren’t a normal part of Jackson’s day, though he’d like them to be; combined with having Noodle Box for lunch, he’s as happy as can be.
Kaufman’s strength and conditioning coach Tyler Goodale arrives and travel arrangements are determined.
Wood and Driedger are meeting us at the venue, and Zugec’s wife and the other females prepping for the evening will come later. Kaufman and her two coaches will travel in one vehicle, myself and Goodale in tow.
On the ride there, Goodale and I discuss Kaufman, whom he describes as one of the most special athletes he’s worked with in his career, heady praise from a man who works with numerous Olympic competitors and National team members at the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence.
The team is sharing a dressing room with Nathan “Roadhouse” Swayze, a powerful striker from the Comox Valley Boxing Club. Wood and Driedger are already hanging out in the room when the rest of the group arrives, breaking in their gloves.
Wood jokes about his entrance music, “The Imperial March” by John L. Williams. You might know it best as “Darth Vader’s theme,” the symphonic musical cue of the Dark Lord’s arrival in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
“I’m trying to tap into the geek demographic,” Wood says with a laugh and a smile. “They’re an unappreciated part of the MMA audience.”
Considering Driedger walked out of the gym earlier in the day sporting a t-shirt emblazoned with The Flash’s logo (and will show up at Boston Pizza later in the evening wearing a Green Lantern hood), it’s more than fair to say these two aren’t your typical skull and daggers MMA apparel models.
Two more members of the ZUMA team arrive in the dressing room, Ty Dolby and Diego Wilson. They’re there not only to support their teammates but to help them get loose. Swayze heads to the MMA equivalent of the on-deck circle, wishes of good luck following him out the door. He’d go on to earn a third round submission win in the second bout of the night.
His departure means Wood is closer to taking the cage, and he starts to warm-up. Dolby grabs focus mitts and Wood hits them with rapid precision as Zugec tapes Driedger’s hands. He’s quick with both his hands and his movement, bouncing to new angles with each connection and “Yes,” from his teammate.
They switch to Thai pads and the booming “thwap” that fills the room causes everyone to blink with each connection of shin to pad. Goodale looks at me, impressed by the first display of Wood’s striking that he’s seen, and with good reason. He’s sharp and ready to earn a second consecutive win under the AFC banner.
It’s time for Wood to hit the on-deck circle, and he gives high fives to Driedger and Kaufman, both of whom will stay in the back while their teammate takes to the cage. As the rest of the group congregates at the entrance point to the arena, I make my way into the crowd, eager to see and hear the reaction to Wood’s walkout music.
As his opponent’s song stops and “The Imperial March” begins, the crowd gets as loud as they’ve been all night, and it spurs Wood on. He marches down the entrance aisle, focused, eager to get into the cage. A quick round of hugs with his coaches and a check from the referee done, the cage door closes behind him and he’s ready to set the tone for the team.
The audience is a pro-ZUMA crowd, many of the gym’s students in attendance offering Wood a large round of applause as he’s introduced. Referee John Cooper starts the fight and Wood comes out throwing his hands.
His opponent looks flat footed and two-seconds too slow, eating a couple sharp jabs early. Wood mixes in a leg kick, but leaves his hands a little low and eats a hook. Dolby and Wilson tense up in the second row of seats, recalling the quick defeat that Wood’s suffered at the third AFC event, a similar punch starting the end of his evening.
Though his knee buckles slightly, Wood shakes it off and keeps coming forward behind his jab. He’s the aggressor and the faster of the two, but another right hook hits his jaw flush before he’s taken down.
“Don’t panic, take your time,” is said simultaneously by me, Dolby, and Goodale, and Wood does just that. He lands some elbows from the bottom and pushes his opponent off so he can scramble to his feet.
It’s an even first round through the halfway point when Wood finds his range and his rhythm. A series of punches forces his opponent backwards, the last connection putting him on his back next to the cage. Wood swarms and measures his shots, stacking his opponent’s legs and raining down fists and elbows.
Cooper steps in at 4:29 of the opening round, and ZUMA is 1-0 on the night.
In the cage, Wood is already back to being the gregarious competitor I’ve gotten to know over the last 18 months of living in Victoria and spending time at ZUMA.
He looks down at his shorts as he thanks his sponsors, something Kaufman reminded him to do as he was walking out of the dressing room, and says he’d love to be back for the next event in June.
Hugs and high fives are exchanged on the walk backstage, stopping to pose for a couple of pictures for local media along the way.
A round of applause greets Wood as the enters the dressing room. He tells Zugec his hands felt good and that he’d like to keep the wraps. Zugec is already back to work on Kaufman’s wraps, though at one point, Kaufman is doing her own hands, tearing the tape with her teeth. Without turning around, Zugec instructs Wilson to go watch the next fight, a bout between two fellow bantamweights, one of whom Wilson submitted in his last AFC appearance.
Wood is told to go watch as well, and he slips on flip flops and heads to the arena floor, hands still taped, sweat still beading on his forehead. I go with him to get his thoughts on his performance.
“I felt good,” he says as we walk out to watch the fight. “I felt strong, I felt fast. Obviously there are some things I could work on, some things I didn’t do that well, but you know, listen to me. Give yourself some credit, Connor; you just won, right?”
I tell him I think the fact he’s picking apart the few mistakes he made is great, indicative of the focus and drive for perfection that runs throughout the team.
“It’s better than being out here thinking you’re great and have nothing to work on,” I suggest.
“That’s true,” Wood agrees. We stop really paying attention to the action in the cage and talk about the mindset of the team, the drive to be successful and lack of ego that struck me earlier in the day at the gym.
Wood credits it to Zugec, adding that each member of the team wants to be successful and is willing to make the sacrifices necessary to get there. We get back to the one-sided fight in the cage, where Wilson’s former opponent is in complete control, eventually winning by TKO in the third round.
Back in the dressing room, Driedger is now the one hitting pads with Dolby. Compact and powerful, good hands and strong wrestling have propelled him to a 4-1 record.
We laugh at the write-up on his opponent in the program, who was apparently brought in specifically to fight Driedger because he’s a brawler, a style description that doesn’t make sense to anyone in the room. Driedger is technically sound and workmanlike in the cage, the kind of fighter who should pick a brawler apart in theory.
He’s far more relaxed than Wood, joking about Kaufman’s poor choice of colors for her walkout shirt (grey) and how his shirt choice looks much better. A wrangler comes by and tries to explain when Driedger will head out, but it’s a confusing mess of numbers that leaves Jackson asking rhetorical questions, trying to work out the math in the corer of the dressing room.
“Did that even make sense? Someone will come and get you in five, and they’re doing a ten-minute intermission. Does that mean you’re fighting in 15 or standing there for the last five minutes of the break? And why are they doing a break anyway?”
As it turned out, the final five minutes of the intermission was spent in the on-deck circle, with Zugec asking for an assessment of the bantamweight contest from Wilson, Driedger bobbin and weaving with a towel over his head and the rest of us amused by the fact that unlike most MMA shows, intermission at AFC 5 takes place to souped-up Paul Simon, not heavy metal and rap.
A crowd reaction similar the the one that met Wood greets Driedger as he walks to the cage. Once he’s inside, he paces between the posts, marking off the red corner.
Like Wood, he starts quickly, a jab sending his opponent’s head straight back. Though his hands are landing and he’s not taking much damage in space, Driedger pushes in and clinches. Each time they separate, the same pattern repeats itself.
The first and second are mirror images, Driedger winning the exchanges and controlling the fight, but spending a lot of time clinched and working for takedowns. The third is more of the same.
In the final thirty seconds, Driedger is clipped with a spinning backfist, his opponent’s forearm opening up a gash over his right eye. Driedger pushes through it and earns a clean sweep on the scorecards, but it’s easy to tell he’s unhappy despite the fact that his win moves his team to 2-0 on the evening.
Everyone knows he’s worried about the size of the cut, and they do their best to downplay it. Jackson tells him it’s nothing and Dolby suggests a little super glue might do the trick. It won’t; the ringside doctor will put seven stitches into Driedger’s eyebrow thirty minutes later, but not until after the fighter tries to pawn him off on someone else and makes sure there will be freezing involved in the process.
The self-deprecation that soundtracked the afternoon in the gym is back, Driedger picking apart his performance mercilessly.
“That was horrible. I was doing great in the striking until I decided to push in and clinch, and gas myself out against the cage the whole time. It’s great that he cut me with a spinning backfist too because I don’t make fun of those all the time either.”
Zugec is quietly pleased with Driedger’s self-evaluation, saying the experience of going the full 15 minutes is a positive and that now they know some things to work on. He’ll later tell me he’s happy to hear Driedger picking himself apart, knowing that a three first-round victories that preceded tonight’s harder-than-expected encounter didn’t give him much cause to be critical of his performance.
As Driedger heads off to get his stitches, Kaufman begins warming up.
Dolby returns to holding pads, and as Kaufman delivers a series of kicks, Zugec takes digs at his star student.
“Sarah doesn’t throw leg kicks, she throws ass kicks,” he says, getting a smile from the corn-rowed title contender. “It’s all ass. Watch.”
Kaufman thuds another kick into the Thai pads. Considering she can kick my ass, I have no comment on Kaufman’s form, backside or how the two work in concert as she kicks.
While Jackson has been doling out advice during each of the previous two fights, he’s up and active in the dressing room for the first time. Kaufman has been down to Albuquerque to train on a number of occasions, and Jackson knows her skill set and what she needs to do against her opponent, Japanese veteran Megumi Yabushita.
With Kaufman working on throw defense with Dolby, Jackson reminders her about positioning, commending her movement with each successive practice exercise.
We head out to the waiting area, watching the co-main event of the evening from backstage, Kaufman bouncing around in her oversized hat covered in the logos of her sponsors.
Jackson and I discuss Zugec, the team he’s crafted and the fact that very few people acknowledge what he’s done as a coach, both locally and abroad.
“It’s not like he’s crafted a world champion or anything,” Jackson offers sarcastically as Kaufman throws punches at the air while awaiting her cue to walk to the cage. We agree to connect later in the week, once Jackson is back in Albuquerque. This isn’t the time for an interview.
The lights in the arena go out and the crowd starts to cheer.