shooto fight in fukushima

yesterday i went with my kboxing coach and 13 guys from the gym to a fight in fukushima city. we piled into 3 cars and left kameda at 6am to get there in time for weigh-in. some of the guys are often on the brink of their allotted weight and if they're over they're not able to fight their assigned opponent. so none of them eat or drink anything 24 hours prior to weigh-in. when we got their, they all stripped down to almost nothing and lined up for the scale. (yeah...there's a reason i went). apparently sometimes if they're over weight by a fraction of a kilo, then they'll take off everything and stand on the scale cupping themselves haha.
the first part of the morning fights were brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is a kind of japanese jiu-jitsu tailored to the brazilian standards of no-holds-bard fighting and then re-imported back to japan. there were two guys from our gym also competing in those matches. i also met a guy originally from nagaoka who had just moved back from 5 years living in arizona, where he did NHB cage-fighting.
there were about 11 guys from our gym competing shooto (kickboxing + grappling). of the 11 who fought, 8 of them won their fights and one got MVP of the day. unfortunately one guy had to go the the hospital after his fight because of a broken nose, optical bone, and cheek bone. he bled all over the tatami mats and my coach went to get him from the hospital after the fights were over...
after the day was over we piled back into the cars and headed back to niigata. sugoi tanoshikatta.