Five Reasons To Get Excited About Rage In The Cage

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Five for Fighting.

Rage in the Cage takes place on March 21st at The Lagoon centre in Paisley. If you needed a reason to get excited about it, here’s five.

 

1 – Old School Tournament

There’s really nothing else to say here. If you’re not excited about a one night, 8 man winner takes all tournament then you’re a fan of the wrong sport. The tournament format is what the UFC started with back in the glory days of Dan Severn’s moustache and Royce Gracie submitting the life out of the opposition. One of the main reasons those days are looked at as glory days is the excitement of the one night multiple man tournaments.
The one night tournament format has fallen out of favour with the major MMA promotions. Bellator operates a tournament format but it’s not one night tournament nor is it for a title. The risks of defeat to high profile fighters is high. Also if the tournament is over a period of time, once a favourite is knocked out the interest in the tournament quickly dies. The Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix showed us that.
The prospect of this tournament format being held in Scotland is mouth-watering and the quality of fighters involved only adds more flavour, which leads us nicely onto #2.

2 – Calibre of Fighters

There are 8 fighters taking part in this tournament and there is only one has not competed professionally in MMA. Charlie Ward is this one fighter. He trains out of SBG and by all accounts is no scrub. The other 7 have all competed professionally in their respective countries and for promotions such as Cage Warriors and Bellator. For profiles of all fighters and the FTS team’s personal picks click HERE.

3 – National Pride at Stake in the Undercard.

The undercard is stacked to the gunnels with interesting match ups. Scottish fan favourites Graham Turner and Marin Delaney fight Spaniards Joel Suarez and Javier Fuentes respectively. A country v country aspect will certainly add to the appeal of the one night tournament taking place.

4 – The next middleweight to fight in the UFC?

The UFC I hear you say. Yes, the UFC. The winner of this tournament will have beaten 3 top Middleweights in one evening’s work. Roan Carneiro won an 8 man welterweight tournament at Battlegrounds MMA 5 in Texas and subsequently won a place back in the UFC for his efforts. Bearing in mind that this tournament features Jack Marshman, the highest ranked UK Middleweight not with the UFC already, with the UFC coming to Glasgow in July the winner of this tournament wouldn’t be out of place on it’s undercard.

Roan Carneiro in his quarter final match up against Randall Wallace at Battleground MMA.

5 – Can they pull it off?

As we mentioned earlier, the bigger promotions have all given up on the one night tournament. There are numerous reasons that make them far too risky – winning fighters getting injured and the bracket falling apart, all the fighters even showing up and making weight is no guarantee, the purse needed to entice such high level professionals to fight in a winner takes all scenario. There are lots more reasons. Trust us.

So to see a Scottish promotion attempt something the big promotions gave up on is fascinating. The logistics alone of flying 8 fighters over from 5 different countries is a tough ask. And the £10,000 prize money – unheard of on Scottish soil! To put it into perspective as a prize pot, it’s about double what a losing UFC debutant would make. If Rage in The Cage somehow pull it off, it will be something spectacular. If they don’t? Who doesn’t love watching a train wreck?

We will be attending the show and be doing live play by play of every round so remember to like Fight Talk Scotland on FB by clicking HERE.