Champion

Here in Newcastle the word "Champion" is commonly used as an adjective. For the rest of the world it's only a noun, with two possible contexts. Someone who has won, or someone has been chosen to represent a group of people. In terms of our sport, and specifically our gym, once you have won the medal or won the belt, you can call yourself a champion. Now it's put upon you to be the representative - to carry the reputation of the academy on your shoulders. You must fulfill the second part of the definition once you have achieved the first. You can, and should, interpret that to mean you must be athletically excellent. You have to be the fittest, strongest and bravest to bear that accolade. The athletic aspect is a given, but in my opinion a champion should be more than a sportsman, but an example of human quality in every respect. Champions who lack integrity are always remembered as disappointments. Who would you rather be, Pacqiou or Tyson?

The Killer

Tommy brought home a unanimous decision after stepping up at the 11th hour to fill the headlining slot on "King of the ring" in Nottingham. Tommy combined the takedowns of Georges st. Pierre, the ground and pound of Fedor Emileanenko and the footwork of Micheal Flatley to give a dominant performance against the shockingly hard Shaun Lomas.
Shaun is well known to all in Newcastle, having fought Matt Inman, me(Peter Irving) twice and is due to take on Lee Donald at the next Newcastle Fight Night. He holds an ISKA Northern areas Super Middleweight title and is a British Super Middleweight Muay Thai champion with countless Muay Thai, Kickboxing and Boxing matches to his credit. In case you're not familiar with him, here's Shaun going the distance with Cambodian legend Eh Phutong-

Name change

You may have noticed that I have replaced the title of the blog with "Newcastle MMA". It's been brought to my attention that a search for Newcastle MMA on Google doesn't bring up anything to do with us for several pages. Given that we've produced all of our cities top fighters and act as a hub for many of the regions top Pros, that struck me as unjust. Knowing nothing other than how to publish stuff on predetermined templates like this and Facebook, changing the name and creating a Facebook group of the same name ( http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=128201419462&ref=nf )was my best guess. If anyone else has a better idea on how to get credit where credit is due please let me know.