How it all started
Every good superhero (or villain) has a good origin story. This blog is Lockdown MMA’s version of one. The story starts quite a while back now – all the way back to 2005-2006 in fact. These were the years when the start of what would become Lockdown MMA was taking shape.
In these years, I was still kickboxing. But little did I know that these days were about to come to an abrupt end. There had been a guy turning up to kickboxing who was working on his striking for MMA and we started talking as I was quite interested. He then showed me a clip of Wanderlei Silva in the Pride Fighting Championship. Pride was notorious for its laxed rules around hitting grounded opponents. Specifically, kicking and stomping to the head of a grounded opponent was legal. Well, Silva had his opponent in the corner and stomped on his head while holding the ropes. To be honest, that actually put me off MMA a bit. I worked with this guy, helping his striking and before long we ended up having a roll. At the time I actually felt confident (which was ignorant) as I had done some rolling at karate (although it wasn’t really rolling) and thought I’d be okay.
When I got into rolling with someone that knew what they were doing, I got smashed. As I was rather competitive in kickboxing and thought I could fight, I realised I really had to learn how to do this ground stuff.The lack of skill in this area lead to me train BJJ and MMA. We would be at the kickboxing club doing striking while adding some rolling – trying our best to put it together. Before long, other people started joining in. I am not 100% sure of the timeline here but one of the guys at the fight gym thought promoting MMA fights was a great idea so he brought a cage. There were a few events held in the cage but the blessing there was that we now had it as a training tool. This is when our training really took off.
There is nothing quite like working takedowns against the cage or sparring in the cage. It’s the closest thing to the real deal we could get in training. It wasn’t all perfect though. In winter, it was freezing, and we would wear socks. Which, thinking back, didn’t do much because our toes were still white at the end of session. We found the opposite happened in summer as all the sweat would make the cage floor ridiculously slippery. The best part,however, was the Saturday morning sessions. You had to be invited and some people didn’t want the invite as they were brutal sessions. At the time, we didn’t know it, but we had some of the best fighters in Lockdown’s history all at one time. There weren’t many of us, but everyone that showed up was a tough round. We would do 2 or 3 rounds with everyone and get battered but we all loved the challenge of it. Almost all of those people have moved on and there are couple of BJJ brown belts – one even running his own club. One thing is for sure though,if we ever bump into each other we talk about those Saturday morning training sessions. The guy that brought the cage was moving to Australia and wanted to sell it. I had a chat to them about buying it from them and was hopeful that would happen. However, they ended up selling it to another club before we could finalise a deal.
Now Lockdown was in Wellington and we teamed up with a BJJ club. This was when our numbers were at its highest. We had a good location and lots of people wanting to try MMA. In hindsight though, the reason the numbers were high was because BJJ people like to train as often as they can so they would come along to train MMA rather than do nothing. It was a good set up. Then came the split and the BJJ club went off to their own location and Lockdown was unable to pay the bills at the current location so we had to move as well. We have been in the current location since 2012 and all it is going well so far.
So, how did we come up with the name Lockdown? Remember the guy I initially rolled with? Well, we decided to start up an MMA club with the people that wanted to train. Both of us came up with names (I can’tremember his last two options) but mine were KaosMMA and Lockdown MMA. Everyone around me told me that they did not like Lockdown as it made people think of a prison. I liked it enough though, so I stayed with it and that was my preferred option. So, it was Lockdown MMA as my option and the other guy chose Omega Fight Force. I did not want Omega Fight Force and he didn’t want Lockdown, so the only option was to put it to a vote. We took it to the people training and got them to vote – thank goodness Lockdown MMA won. Funnily enough, it seems to be about the best name possible at the moment as well.
Over the years we have had many people fight – the first two were Scott and Brad. We went up to Auckland for these fights, both of them are tough and had trained hard so I was confident of getting two wins. The fights were in a cage and preparing for an MMA fight is different to a kickboxing fight, so we were a little unsure of the best way to get ready. Overall, it was more or less the same; get the muscles warm, get the adrenalin dump out the way, get the head in the right place and get out there and win. It was a great night with both guys winning their fights. There have been lots of memorable fights for me. But the bit that comes to mind the most, is the relationships I have built with people through fighting. Watching confidence grow in someone that does not believe in themselves is priceless. Building trust with someone that doesn’t trust many people is a great feeling. Seeing people perform at the level you know they are capable of, but they are not quite sure then seeing the look on their face after the success is a great thing. Anyone can be happy with a win but seeing people dealing with losses a lot better than I ever did was a learning experience. Plus, a loss brings people closer together than a win ever could. The people that fight is important but the people that turn up to training and don’t fight but put their training on hold to help out the fighters, these people are the glue that holds the gym together.
There have been many ups and downs over the years of Lockdown MMA. But the people who I have met through training have made it so damn enjoyable and I am looking forward to many more years Lockdown MMA. Thank you to everyone that has ever set foot on the Lockdown mat for training.
Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor