DJR
2/28/2009 9:30pm,
I live in Vancouver, BC and we've been having a wave of high-publicity gang killings in the city over the past while. A few of the people hit have had some kind of involvement with local MMA fights, sometimes as fighters, and at least one guy that was a promoter and trainer (see story from a local sports reporter below).
I'm wondering if this is a local anomaly, or if people have noticed much in the way of gang/organized crime involvement in MMA where they live?
The story below isn't too bad, but some other Vancouver reporters have tried to make a big deal of the MMA connections of these guys, and the last thing the sport needs is yet more media-driven "moral panics."
http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/groundandpound/archive/2009/02/11/gangsters-and-mma.aspx
The Vancouver Sun
Division of Canwest Publishing Inc.
2010 Wintergames
Today is Saturday February 28, 2009
Gangsters and MMA
By Chris Parry 02-11-2009 Ground and Pound
Earlier in the week, another Vancouver gang member got himself perforated when he was cornered in a Langley shopping mall parking lot by several vans filled with folks armed with autmoatic weapons.
Clearly they weren't playin'.
The victim, who has since fallen off the twig, was Kevin Leclair. He was by all accounts bad news - the kind of guy you wouldn't want to be dealing with down on 0 Avenue, if you know what I mean. He ran with the Bacon Brothers - nuff said.
When the story broke, we found out fairly quickly that the guy had fought in a couple of MMA events back in 2005, racking up what has become known as the 'gangster's record' of 0-2.
I call that the gangster's record because whenever a gang member dies and is found to have been at one point involved in MMA, that's generally the record you'll find. Variations include 1-2, 0-3, and 0-1.
Joe Krantz, an alleged drug dealer who was gunned down in the stairwell of his Abbotsford Gym in which he trained a host of guys with less-than-stellar records, was a 1-2.
One of his fighters, Terry Seimon, beat Leclair in a fight in '05. Seimon's record today? 1-0.
Why do gangsters have such crappy MMA records? Because you have to be a dedicated athlete to make it in this sport. If all you can do is swing hard, Tank Abbott-style, and hope you knock out your opponent before you gas out 45 seconds in, you're going to get creamed.
And let's face it, anyone who gets into the gang lifestyle isn't the sort of person who has a long term plan, you know what I mean? Gangsters fight for the glory, then realize there's no glory in being knocked out - so they quit.
Why does any of this matter? Quite simply because being in a fight doesn't make you a professional fighter, any more than playing recreational hockey makes you an NHLer, or tossing a football at your kid makes you draft eligible.
Gang members are generally tough guys, or they'd like to think they are, so they gravitate towards tough guy sports. Thus, you'll sometimes find people in boxing gyms and martial arts dojos sporting I.S. tattoos and U.N. t-shirts. You might even find them running such gyms, since alleged drug dealers and gang members often have enough money to fulfill their fantasies, even if they don't have the talent to back it up (can I get a witness, Hal Hefner?).
This is why we at The Sun didn't mention Leclair's MMA record when we reported on his killing. Other media outlets did - even though they couldn't confirm it was the same guy - in breathless paragraphs that seemed to imply that, hey, he was into MMA - it was bound to happen.
Though we at The Sun knew the victim was the same Kevin Leclair that got his butt kicked out of the cage whenever he stepped into it, to us it just wasn't pertinent to the story.
To quote Adam Ryan, a local MMA instructor with a professional fight background and a sterling reputation as a trainer, "Gang members play hockey too, but when they get in trouble, nobody ever says the guy was 'involved in hockey circles'."
I've been talking a lot to Paul Daniel who runs Valleyfight recently, and that promotion is working triple overtime to put rules in place to ensure gang-affiliated crowds don't use it as a haven.
Daniel has been trying to work with people in Coquitlam to set up rules and regulations so that MMA events can be held out there, and part of how he's keeping his events as clean as he can is by limiting ticket sales in the front row (where gang members want to be seen) to corporate clients, keeping group sales to 4-6 people maximum (thereby dissuading large contingents of similarly t-shirtd goons from collecting on one side of the arena), and he's even open to criminal record checks of fighters.
I spoke to our old friend former UFC fighter and TUF graduate Kalib Starnes yesterday and asked him if he knew of Leclair back when he was associated with the Revolution Fight Team, as Leclair fought under the Revolution banner.
Kalib says he knew of Leclair, but not while he was at Revolution.
"Sorry to hear that," said Starnes. "[Leclair] had asked me to teach him private lessons a few times but he never showed up. That's all I can really tell you about him."
And there it is, in a nutshell, the gangster-level committment to MMA.
How do we get the gang element out of local MMA? We could start with regulation of the sport.
On an aside, Kalib says he trying to line up his next fight, but in the meantime is available for private training during the daytime hours. Drop him a note at Kastarnes@gmail.com
© 2008 Canwest Publishing Inc
I'm wondering if this is a local anomaly, or if people have noticed much in the way of gang/organized crime involvement in MMA where they live?
The story below isn't too bad, but some other Vancouver reporters have tried to make a big deal of the MMA connections of these guys, and the last thing the sport needs is yet more media-driven "moral panics."
http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/groundandpound/archive/2009/02/11/gangsters-and-mma.aspx
The Vancouver Sun
Division of Canwest Publishing Inc.
2010 Wintergames
Today is Saturday February 28, 2009
Gangsters and MMA
By Chris Parry 02-11-2009 Ground and Pound
Earlier in the week, another Vancouver gang member got himself perforated when he was cornered in a Langley shopping mall parking lot by several vans filled with folks armed with autmoatic weapons.
Clearly they weren't playin'.
The victim, who has since fallen off the twig, was Kevin Leclair. He was by all accounts bad news - the kind of guy you wouldn't want to be dealing with down on 0 Avenue, if you know what I mean. He ran with the Bacon Brothers - nuff said.
When the story broke, we found out fairly quickly that the guy had fought in a couple of MMA events back in 2005, racking up what has become known as the 'gangster's record' of 0-2.
I call that the gangster's record because whenever a gang member dies and is found to have been at one point involved in MMA, that's generally the record you'll find. Variations include 1-2, 0-3, and 0-1.
Joe Krantz, an alleged drug dealer who was gunned down in the stairwell of his Abbotsford Gym in which he trained a host of guys with less-than-stellar records, was a 1-2.
One of his fighters, Terry Seimon, beat Leclair in a fight in '05. Seimon's record today? 1-0.
Why do gangsters have such crappy MMA records? Because you have to be a dedicated athlete to make it in this sport. If all you can do is swing hard, Tank Abbott-style, and hope you knock out your opponent before you gas out 45 seconds in, you're going to get creamed.
And let's face it, anyone who gets into the gang lifestyle isn't the sort of person who has a long term plan, you know what I mean? Gangsters fight for the glory, then realize there's no glory in being knocked out - so they quit.
Why does any of this matter? Quite simply because being in a fight doesn't make you a professional fighter, any more than playing recreational hockey makes you an NHLer, or tossing a football at your kid makes you draft eligible.
Gang members are generally tough guys, or they'd like to think they are, so they gravitate towards tough guy sports. Thus, you'll sometimes find people in boxing gyms and martial arts dojos sporting I.S. tattoos and U.N. t-shirts. You might even find them running such gyms, since alleged drug dealers and gang members often have enough money to fulfill their fantasies, even if they don't have the talent to back it up (can I get a witness, Hal Hefner?).
This is why we at The Sun didn't mention Leclair's MMA record when we reported on his killing. Other media outlets did - even though they couldn't confirm it was the same guy - in breathless paragraphs that seemed to imply that, hey, he was into MMA - it was bound to happen.
Though we at The Sun knew the victim was the same Kevin Leclair that got his butt kicked out of the cage whenever he stepped into it, to us it just wasn't pertinent to the story.
To quote Adam Ryan, a local MMA instructor with a professional fight background and a sterling reputation as a trainer, "Gang members play hockey too, but when they get in trouble, nobody ever says the guy was 'involved in hockey circles'."
I've been talking a lot to Paul Daniel who runs Valleyfight recently, and that promotion is working triple overtime to put rules in place to ensure gang-affiliated crowds don't use it as a haven.
Daniel has been trying to work with people in Coquitlam to set up rules and regulations so that MMA events can be held out there, and part of how he's keeping his events as clean as he can is by limiting ticket sales in the front row (where gang members want to be seen) to corporate clients, keeping group sales to 4-6 people maximum (thereby dissuading large contingents of similarly t-shirtd goons from collecting on one side of the arena), and he's even open to criminal record checks of fighters.
I spoke to our old friend former UFC fighter and TUF graduate Kalib Starnes yesterday and asked him if he knew of Leclair back when he was associated with the Revolution Fight Team, as Leclair fought under the Revolution banner.
Kalib says he knew of Leclair, but not while he was at Revolution.
"Sorry to hear that," said Starnes. "[Leclair] had asked me to teach him private lessons a few times but he never showed up. That's all I can really tell you about him."
And there it is, in a nutshell, the gangster-level committment to MMA.
How do we get the gang element out of local MMA? We could start with regulation of the sport.
On an aside, Kalib says he trying to line up his next fight, but in the meantime is available for private training during the daytime hours. Drop him a note at Kastarnes@gmail.com
© 2008 Canwest Publishing Inc