Knucklemania 5 in Philadelphia on Saturday night. Great event! 17,762 at the Wells Fargo Center, which broke the record for combat sports attendance in the city. Ben Rothwell, the co-headliner used his post-fight speech to talk about how awesome the atmosphere was. The crowd was loud as hell and totally into it, proving what most of us already knew – that the regional circuit is robust even though there’s not a lot of media coverage.

Headliner Eddie Alvarez lost to Jeremy Stephens via a third round corner stoppage. Good fight though. Eddie looked solid enough, he just ate too many hard shots and his team called it. It’s one of those things where if this was an MMA fight, he’d take that damage, find a way to clinch and grapple and fight through it, then come out on the other end. If you’ve watched any of Eddie’s fights over the years, you know he’s got this innate ability to shrug off damage and find a way to recover. It’s a little tougher in BKFC because you can’t exactly drag the other guy into deep waters with you, physically or mentally. You get separated and then you’re right back in the stand up against a hard hitter. Eddie is 41 years old and has had a great career. He finally got to headline a big event in his hometown. No shame walking away from the sport now, if that’s something he’s been thinking about.

Now, to the big story on Action News. Nobody had a better 48 hours than South Philly’s John Garbarino, the guy who smashed a cannoli over his opponent’s head at the weigh-ins. Not only did he KO his opponent, but he proposed to his girlfriend in the ring afterward:

Great stuff. This is how it’s done, kids. You want everyone to know who you are? Start a cannoli fight on Friday, KO your opponent on Saturday, then propose to your girlfriend while Conor McGregor and 17,000 people go nuts. Have yourself a weekend, Johnny Cannoli.

The entire BKFC card was really entertaining. Good fights, good pacing. The main card started at nine and ended a little after midnight. You watch some of these UFC pay per views and the main card starts at 10 p.m. and five fights requires three hours. Everyone on the east coast is falling asleep at 1 a.m. trying to watch the main event. They did a good job here of moving things along and holding your interest. It’s just really nice to see Philadelphia have a big combat sports moment like this because there is a massive underground circuit that covers most of the region, from the city, up to Bensalem, down to AC as well, which is where most of the UFC, Bellator, and PFL events have been staged. They rarely actually make it over to the PA side, for whatever reason. After watching this event and seeing this crowd it should open the door to more of it, you hope. Put some Philly fighters on a Philly card and let’s have some fun.


Finally – local guy Patrick Sullivan was KO’d badly in the first round of his fight. He was out for almost a full minute but they got him up and on the chair and got everything sorted. If we can get an update on him I’ll add it in here. Gotta feel for him because he was amped for the fight and had a lot of his people there to watch him.