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As mentioned two weeks ago, today was the day that James “Meat” Nardone made his MMA debut at the Caged Steel amateur inter-club tournament. Having opted to give it a shot only two weeks ago. He didn’t have much time to prepare and if you saw the competition you wouldn’t see much of a difference from amateur and pro.

James was joined by myself, Doug and Andy from Factory with Darren, Andy and Ben also down from Combat Base for more support.

James  debut couldn’t have got off to a better start, his first fight lasted 40 seconds. His opponent came out firing, James looked to soak it up and returned with some surprising shots before going in for the take-down and nailing an armbar.

Next up James stuck to the same plan with the round lasting a little longer only for James to finish it with a solid Rear Naked Choke.

Going into the 3rd fight James was feeling and looking fresh, his tactics were working well. His next opponent showed some good defense on the ground, James was looking to get a triangle and it took him 3 attempts to get close whilst taking hits. He eventually managed to convert it to an Armbar to secure the win and taking the fight to around the 3 and a half minute mark.

All well and done James had secured a place in the Final. Watching his opponent go toe to toe and it emerged that james would be fighting the same guy who had been defending his triangle.

The fight kicked off with James knowing that his opponent would understand his game better and want to stay stood up. James took the opportunity to throw some kicks to which his opponent exploded with solid strait shots. James got rocked hard with a big blow cutting his eyebrow open. His instinct told him to go for the shoot but his opponent was able to turn him with an under-hook as James looked week in the knees.

On the ground James looked like he was moments away from losing only to pull out an instinctfull armbar to seal his win!

Rocked but pleased, James took victory gracefully and congratulated his fierce opponent. James was crowned the winner of the under 77kg catagorie.

He won all fights by submission.

He won all fights in the first round.

He did a combined round time of around 5 minutes.

(Royce Gracie fought 3 fights and James fought 4!! As Darren pointed out)

Huge congrats to James on an astonishing achievement. I will get the competitor names up as well as Video and Pictures as soon as they are developed. Oh and I forgot to mention, I got to fix James cut.