Gary’s MMA win ‘fast and focused’
The South Coast has three MMA fighters achieving notable success.
YOU may have seen the movie ‘Here Comes the Boom’ and had a good laugh at Kevin James’s antics in cage.
Someone you may not have seen on TV (not yet, anyway) is Margate MMA fighter Gary Smit (28).
He recently won the heavyweight title of the MFC Pro-Am in Durban.
Gary fought a category up, weighing in at 105kg for this bout.
“I usually fight light heavyweight but I’ve put on some weight so decided not to cut and rather fight light in the heavier category,” he said.
He stands at 1m 82cm and usually weighs around 93 to 95kg for a fight.
Five rounds lasting five minutes each is the usual expectation for such events.
But Gary’s fight only lasted one minute and 13 seconds.
“In a way it was a bit of an anticlimax,” he said.
There was initially some wrestling, but then Gary struck a telling blow.
“I ‘skopped’ him and he fell to the floor. Pretty soon the ref stopped the fight,” he said.
“Overall, it went quite well. With the heavyweight guys fitness is sometimes an issue. When I saw my opponent, who was quite a bit older than me, I could tell my fitness would be superior to his,” he explained.
Gary enjoyed huge support from Margate and Durban friends and fans.
His fighting name is ‘I Love Your Face’. “I was given this name, it just stuck, I had no choice,” he laughed.
He trained in Durban previously, and is still a member of GBH (Gorgeous Boys Hardcore).
He moved to Margate about a decade ago which was where he started to take the sport more seriously.
Gary is now a full time coach at local club Parabellum (Latin for ‘prepared for war’), training people to fight MMA.
He really enjoys the sport. “I was never really good at anything else,” he joked. “This was something I just fell in love with.”
Looking ahead, he is hoping to fight professionally in EFC.
* Meantime, two of his students also did very well.
Wilmarie Alberts won her fight in the women’s featherweight division on a technical knockout in the third round, and Peter Gavin clinched a first round submission in the welterweight (77kg and under section).
No doubt, we’ll hear more about them in the future.
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