(This is normally where we would place a screencap of the fight. Unfortunately, the quality of SFL streams is so poor that the screencap looked more like a Jackson Pollock than it did anything else and no amount of enhancing could do it justice.)
As you may or may not know given the plethora of fight action that occurred this past weekend, Indian upstart promotion Super Fight League held their fourth event in Mumbai, India. Now, we have been predicting the collapse of SFL for some time now (turns out we just had the wrong promotion) and when it was reported that CEO Ken Pavia had resigned from the organization, it only fueled similar predictions around the MMA blogosphere. Throw in the fact that SFL couldn’t even reel in Bob Sapp for their fourth event — which was headlined by a 1-2 fighter taking on a 11-8 fighter — and you’ve pretty much got all the ammunition you need for an official deathwatch.
But despite all of the things going against them, SFL’s fourth event turned out to be a modest success, at least in terms of the fights themselves. With the exception of the opening fight between bantamweights Irfan Khan and Kaushik Sen (freaking little guys, amiright Michael?), every fight was finished within the distance and impressively so. But no one, I repeat, no one, could top the knockout turned in by Bhabajeet Chowdhury, which was easily one of the most fantastic finishes we have seen all year.
(Fight starts at the 6 minute mark.)
Making his professional debut (!!!), the man we shall officially refer to as “Chowder” from here on out put on an absolute clinic against his fellow debuting counterpart in Charanjit Singh, battering his opponent’s legs with heavy kicks throughout the first round. But it was not until halfway through the second (roughly 14:55 of the video) that Chowder decided to finish his hapless foe off with a brilliantly timed spinning back kick to the jaw that was, dare I say it, Siver-esque in its delivery. Singh does his impersonation of a falling Jujube tree and this one is all over. Speaking of all over, it’s safe to say that Singh’s MMA career might be headed that direction as well. He would be carried out on a stretcher, but according to reports suffered no serious injuries other than his heart, which was ripped from his chest in ritualistic fashion later that evening. Shame.
Don’t get us wrong, SFL is more than likely going to be SOL by the end of the fiscal year, but if they can deliver a few more exciting knockouts like this in the future, perhaps the history books will grant them more than a footnote when all is said and done.