Installment number twelve of the Cage Fury Fighting Championship is this Saturday night in Atlantic City, and as usual, matchmaker Arias Garcia Jr. has assembled some of the Northeast's best regional talent and forced them to fight for their lives on a gyrating platform riddled with spike and surrounded by an endless void of a moat. Oops, sorry, Flash Gordon flashback. No, in CFFC they fight in a cage. Anyway, here are fives reasons why CFFC 12 unbridled awesome and worth checking out.
-Greg Soto -I guess, being that he started out doing amateur MMA back in 2006, you could call Soto an "old schooler". But really, that just means the wrestler-turned-MMAer is seasoned as all hell. Soto has only lost twice, with both of those losses coming during his stint in the UFC, and I've seen him knock dudes out, submit dudes, and win wars. He's facing Chip Pollard for the CFFC belt, and all I have to say about that is Pollard better bring that belt in immaculate condition. Otherwise, when Soto takes it from him, he's going to be pretty pissed it's not shiny and sparkling.
-Chris Liguori -I've written a lot about Liguori through the years, and that's because he's been fighting for a heck of a long time (since about the beginning of MMA in the United States) and he's really good at it. I'm not going to say "The Story" will have an easy fight against wrestler Don Carlo-Clauss, but, uh, no, I will say that. Carlo-Clauss's last convincing win was against Peter Kaljevic back in 2009, and 2009 is ancient history in MMA years.
-Artur Rofi -Romulo Bittencort-trained Rofi has a certain kind of viciousness in the cage that makes for exciting and violent (and, sadly, brief) fights. I've seen him break arms, transition smoothly to chokes, and punch the dickens out of people - all which means that Brian Kelleher (who is himself a very tough individual) is going to be in for a war.
-Ozzy Dugulubgov -With hard punching and an aggressive ground game, Dugulubgov is a pretty hot prospect in the Northeast - although he did hit a speed bump with his surprising loss via guillotine to Mike Wade at CFFC 10. Can he right himself? I think so. I mean, he was slaying cats before, and I doubt all that awesomeness he's shown us in the cage before was a fluke.
-Ariel Sepulveda - I can't help but like Sepulveda. After all, he is the only former karate/kickboxer guy I know who goes for things like Peruvian Neckties and inverted triangles, and very nearly gets them. That kind of gusto takes balls, which is something everyone can respect.