Sword Laments Lack of MMA Coverage

Head coach of Team 4 Corners, Floyd Sword said the Daily Times has written maybe four articles on Mixed Martial Arts in his many years training fighters in the Farmington area.

He spoke not out of overt criticism (all the articles are framed on the far wall of his gym), but a genuine passion for his sport, and lamented the disparity of wealth between the UFC and the rest of the MMA world, which is probably greater than the acute skewed distribution of wealth in actual society.

"It's a real shame because there's some great fighters, female and male, hat just don't get the exposure, the credit that they deserve because they don't sign a UFC contract," Sword said. "The UFC doesn't carry female fighters yet and that's what everybody bases their opinion of the sport on."

He's coached a few fighters that have cracked the national elite and is respected, at least in local circles, as one of the nation's best. Three of his fighters are competing tomorrow in Towaoc, Colo., and one will qualify for a June 11 world title "King of the Cage" bout with a win.

At 10-3 himself, I found Sword to be a clever and engaging personality. Besides having a terrific name for a fighter, he used a playful, witty banter to "criticize" the athletes, getting his point across while maintaining the professional but cordial atmosphere.

He praised Angela Magana loudly for her solid guard work and upbraided her for complaining about her hair getting in the way and her eye getting poked.

"You're not going to have time to (stop and) say your eye got poked against a high-level opponent," Sword yelled out during the first of six five-minute sparring rounds. (With one minute in between, some of the guys were a little tired despite rotating between four people. Magana worked out at Defined Fitness earlier and then tried to push around with several strong men. Think she's in shape?)

"I try to bring that out in her. Make her face her demons," Sword said. "Obviously her strengths are going to be there."

Two specific points of discussion included the temperature in the gym (he keeps it smoldering) and who would win in a fight between a bear and a lion (he says bear, apparently based on the results of an actual fight).

Magana's daughter: Magana, outgoing and a wonderful interview, had some hilarious anecdotes about her six-year-old daughter Delilah, whom she dotes over.

A single mother, Magana brings Delilah to the gym often and she's grown up around male fighters.

"She's going to have a different upbringing. She's going to have a totally different outlook on men and fighting," Magana said. "She's not going to be shy around men or get pushed around at all. She's like, 'I'll choke you out!'"

A recent trip to the playground led Delilah to see a couple rough kids get into a scrap. She approached them in a huff, telling them in no uncertain terms, "You're not supposed to fight unless you train. You're not allowed to fight unless you train for it!"

Delilah often pours her mother water between sparring rounds or wipes blood off her face, imploring her to keep fighting hard. Check out this video of Magana's win over Tia Castillo in her first professional MMA fight. At the 1:50 mark, seconds after knocking out her opponent, Magana and her daughter exchange 'I love you' hand signals through the linked fence.

In Magana's words: "After I'm done hitting the girl in the face, I try to help her up and she's (still out), and my daughter's on the cage and goes, [makes hand gestures for 'I love you']. We do it back and forth.

"She's feisty. Any time she's around a teenage boy or a grown man she thinks it's playtime, time to talk trash."

Reality show: Magana is scheduled to star in the reality show "Ultimate Women's Combat," projected to air between this fall and sometime in 2010.

Stay true and keep pounding,
Christopher