Special to viewVince Lucero, left, fights against Brad Imes in a Mixed Martial Arts event.
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The Ultimate Fighting Championship isn't the only game in town if fight fans want to see a Mixed Martial Arts event.
Bodog Fight and Tuff-N-Uff are sponsoring a championship fighting event at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 1 at Las Vegas Sports Center, located at 121 E. Sunset Road.
"UFC pioneered it all, but there are a lot of other groups that have started out of that," said Barry Meyer, MMA promoter with Tuff-N-Uff Productions.
The most visible difference is that MMA does not use a cage.
"The ring is more sport friendly," Meyer said. "Spectators can see better, and it's not perceived as barbaric."
Meyer is working to get MMA in the Olympics and hopes fighters will be on a mat and not in a ring.
Meyer said he was a karate kid and has been interested in MMA since he saw a fight in 1993.
"It was love at first fight for me," Meyer said. "This is the safest form of street fighting with as limited rules as possible."
Originally, the rules were only no biting and no eye-gouging, but Meyer said some rules have been added to make the sport legal. Fighters cannot hit each other on the back of the head or on the spine.
"Now it's a legitimate sport," Meyer said. MMA fighters need to know boxing, karate, wrestling, kick boxing and jiu jitsu, among other forms of fighting. Meyer said fighters start by working out in gyms. There are classes for kids and adults.
Fighter Karina Taylor took a Muay Thai kick boxing class and said, "I was hooked. I've just been addicted to it ever since."
After that class, Taylor said she knew she was going to be a professional MMA fighter. She spends more than four hours a day training and doesn't take much of a break between fights.
MMA is relatively safe, Meyer said.
"There has not been much injury," Meyer said. "With boxing, (fighters) are getting hit in the head until someone gets knocked out. In MMA, fighters don't take extensive head shots."
Although Taylor said her nose was broken once and she was accidentally headbutted another time, she doesn't spend much time thinking about if she's going to get hurt.
"People have asked me, 'aren't you afraid you're going to get your face broken off?' That's the last thing I think about," she said.
Meyer said Las Vegas is a hotbed for MMA because it's known as the fight capital of the world.
"There's no football, no basketball; this is fight town," he said.
The main event on Feb. 1 is Nick Thompson versus John Troyer, and the nine-fight evening also will feature a four-man tournament and female fights.
Tickets are $30 to $60 and can be purchased from Ticketmaster or at www.tuffnuff.net.
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