Another fight night

My law school friend Chris had his last Chicago fight tonight, at least for a while, as he is moving to Florida to take the bar and live there. We attended one of his mixed martial arts competitions in November 2008, so I was pretty excited for this boxing match.

To celebrate my new job, we first went out for tapas at Twist: a Tapas Cafe, which is in the Wrigleyville area. We had an amazing set of food and drink: a mojito (mine), a mango sangria (Dave's), crab-stuffed artichoke hearts, portobello gnocchi, bacon-wrapped dates, and a caramelized banana with vanilla ice cream. Gah! So good.

From there, it was a short drive to the venue, which was in a school gym. Maybe it was the tapas, but my senses were totally engaged, and I could smell all the beer, coffee, and sweat in the room. Awesome. I was ready for blood.

In the very first match, someone basically got his nose almost broken. At any rate, it was bleeding so much that he soaked up a towel in the red, arterial stuff. In a later match, a dude dressed as Captain America whooped some more butt.


Dave and I predicted that Captain America would win, given that it takes a certain amount of self-confidence to dress like that and beat someone up (and get beaten up yourself). No one came out unscathed - everyone took blows to the head and chest.

In the sixth fight, Chris took the ring. Here he is in black boxing gear.


Chris's was one of the more evenly matched of the evening, and I think he was the only one to go the full three rounds. Being an amateur boxing match, most of the time they stop the match when one person is clearly dominating (or when someone bleeds).

Chris definitely dominated in the first round and a half, but it was more even in the second half, and both guys looked pretty tired by the end. Here's the first round, with Chris in the blue gloves:

In the end, the judges took a long time to decide who won, and finally decided that Chris's opponent had taken the match. I still think it was really evenly matched. The guy was lucky that Chris didn't use his jiu jitsu on him.

It's great to see another law student and future lawyer who has a really fantastic hobby, especially one oriented to physical fitness. Too many attorneys don't find time for hobbies, and many of them let their physical fitness decline rapidly in their desk-centered lives.

I hope that Chris stays in boxing and jiu jitsu, and I'm sure that he will. Now, I'm off to find a way for my knitting hobby to sound more bad-ass.