I remember when this happened and the media referred to it as “Ultimate Fighting” and let everyone assume Dedge died in the UFC. Bob Meyrowitz went on some of the news shows to say it was some obscure event in Ukraine that the UFC had nothing to do with.
At the same time, Art Davie released some public letter urging Meyrowitz to shut down the UFC and basically called the UFC a violent spectacle. Coincidentally, this was shortly after Davie had parted ways with UFC and began promoting K-1 USA. His motive for turning on the UFC at this time was obvious. Also funny is how he called the UFC a spectacle and went on to create “X-Arm.” A “sport” where two guys are strapped to each other by the wrists over a table and they use they’re free arms to try to bash each other’s heads in. Art Davie was a scumbag weasel son of a bitch.
Dedge had one other fight, and in that fight, like the one he died in, it seemed like his main strategy was to try to choke his opponent using his hand wraps. It was like some modified Ezekiel choke.
Yes, the ref in this Ukraine event stopped him from trying to use his wristband. I suppose he could have tried some kind of gi choke but I doubt he was savvy enough for that. I have the other event that he was in, in fact, I posted it on the underground before. It’s currently in the giant video archives of the Kakutogi Road, but I don’t have it uploaded to YouTube at the moment.
This was the unregulated Wild West days of the sport. There’s plenty of stories from shows in the US where they needed a last minute replacement and got somebody out of the crowd. That would be impossible today.
I probably won’t be leaving this up for more than a few days, but if anyone is interested in the event which has the first, and only other Douglas Dedge match before his death, here it is:
Our Video archives over at the Kakutogi Road Patreon (from whence this video was taken) is getting completely massive. I think that there is over 4000 hours there currently, and lately I’ve been adding about 70 different mma/kickboxing/wrestling/etc. videos a week.
I just read an old Sherdog article about the incident. Respect for the dead and all but this Dedge fellow sounded like a very foolish individual. His training partner said he had several “spells” of losing vision or just being totally out of it leading up to the fight and to the best of anyone’s knowledge, never got checked out. How could a married man with five children have persistent stroke like symptoms and not see a doctor? That shit doesn’t happen for no reason. Not only did he not see a doctor, but he went into a fucking NHB fight. It’s kind of mind boggling.
I agree that Dedge was likely acting foolishly, though it’s hard to imagine that he knew of the extent of his medical problems.
One thing that is never really looked at when talking about MMA, is that many of the people that gravitate towards wanting to compete in it do so out of a need to prove something to themselves. Insecurity is common throughout the human race, but I would say is much more exacerbated with/in fighters. Only now we have athletic commissions that can screen out someone with obvious health issues. My point is that Dedge probably allowed feelings of insecurity to override the basic common sense that would have been to accept that he wasn’t cut out for NHB fighting at his age, skill level, and most importantly when he had a large family to take care of. Still, I doubt he could have figured that he was in any real danger. The fight he was in wouldn’t have killed most people, even those of the weekend warrior dad bod types that he was in league with, something had to be seriously wrong with him mediacally.
I remember when this story came out
I went to elementary school with a kid with the exact same name and had not seen him since then.
So I was kind of drawn to the story by the name first but it turned out completely different guy.
Overall it was a sad day for the MMA community regardless of the circumstances
I suppose that could apply to his wife and kids too if they saw him blacking out or having heath issues. You going to come out and say thet some of the blame rests on them?
Reese, Aparo, Liston Brown, Showalter, Barbera, Friedman, Myself were just a few in the weightclass to make the NYS Jr National team in 93 it was fucking stacked. Resese teched Liston Brown using possibly the most beautiful belly-to-belly five-point suplex I’ve ever seen in my life
All trolling and forum joking aside, it should be considered spousal abuse on her part and the children should be taken away before its too late for them too. I wonder if she made him take out a life insurance policy on himself first, perhaps she’s the one that set him up and maybe even doused his water bottle with untraceable quantities of Cyanide. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction on this one homie, I’m going to see if Jake Shields could help me out with the rest let me know if you have any more theories so I can bring them to the authorities. Keep fighting the good fight!
Most likely. I didn’t follow the high school records much after Jesse Jansen. I do know that at the end of Reese’s career he was second only to Showalter at the time but then things changed and kids started getting like 50 matches a year. And yes Jeff really was a nice kid. It had to be a real shity blow to his family and his entire Community when that happened. I really would have liked to see how his college career would have played out