Just forty minutes outside of Boston, Massachusetts in the small town of Marlborough, competitors and spectators gathered for the New England Open Martial Arts tournament. It is a once a year event with a growing reputation for innovation and competitor support. This year's event took place the weekend of June 4-5, 2010 and promoter Joe Greenhalgh, as he does every year, did everything possible to make the event competitor friendly. A spacious location, music boxes in all the musical division rings, electronic visual scoreboards and clocks for sparring were all part of the competitor-oriented experience.
The New England Open is home to some crazy divisions that Greenhalgh invented. Superforms and international team sparring were a couple ideas from prior events. In 2010, Greenhalgh created professional divisions for black belt youth forms and weapons competitors. The top three in these new divisions received scholarships of $250, $150 or $50, something nearly unheard of in other competitions for kids. With the new professional divisions for kids, all the regular NASKA forms and weapons divisions, Superfights, team sparring and continuous sparring, the New England Open offered a blend of competition that was well-balanced and fun to experience.
Friday was a beautiful day at the event with the sun shining as competitors filed into the competition arena. There was action everywhere to be observed as the extreme and musical forms and weapons competition was run off. There was one ring that deserved a lot of focus and that was the one with men's weapons. In sparring, many times people on the same team will bow out to one or the other rather than fight. There was no bowing out between the members of Team Paul Mitchell as Kalman Csoka, Matt Emig, Marc Canonizado and Rudy Reynon battled for supremacy.
Emig who has been making a steady comeback after a broken leg was definitely BACK in men's extreme weapons. He went all out with his nunchaku performance and had the crowd on its feet. Following Emig, Rudy Reynon and Marc Canonizado felt the heat and turned it on with their performances. However, it was Emig that took the win in the division and would advance to the grand championships the following day.
Giving a message to big men everywhere, Mario Webb rocked the house with his musical performance as the big guy was flipping, dropping into the splits and amazing everyone with his speed and agility. But the forms competition was all Marc Canonizado as Canonizado won extreme, musical and creative forms to make the grand championships in men's creative/extreme/musical forms a virtual cake walk for him.
There were nine teams vying for the title in men's team sparring. With Raymond "the Real Deal" Daniels in the house, everyone was expecting him to carry his Team All Stars into the final fight and the championships. Team All Stars started off the fighting with a 14-12 win over Team Victory's Sam Simeon, El Java Abdul Qadir and Troy Binns. In the other bracket, the second of two Team Full Circle teams started its march to the finals. Cass Sigmon, Jason Grenier and Hamed Firouzi defeated a Central/South American team and advanced to the final two after a win over Team Straight Up. Team All Stars' next challenge was Team Full Circle's other team of Ryan McGriff, Niko Negron and Ross Levine. Negron's 4-3 win over Robbie Lavoie and McGriff's 7-4 win over Jack Felton put Full Circle in a good position going into the final round where the determined Ross Levine faced the infamous Raymond Daniels. Levine got off to a good start and attacked well. With four points to play with, Levine was relaxed and Daniels needed to make up the deficit. In the end, Levine won the match 5-3 and Team Full Circle A advanced.
Team Full Circle A's only obstacle to getting into the final round to face the other Team Full Circle at this point was Team Next Level's Paris Wilson, Anthony Merricks and Lawrence Wray. McGriff's first round 10-2 defeat of Wilson made it impossible for Next Level to get back into the game and Team Full Circle A advanced to the final round. With two Full Circle teams in the finals, one team just bowed out to the other as they both accepted the final honors and the designation of dominating men's team at this point in 2010.
The final fighting competition of the evening was the men's and women's Superfight eliminations. For the women, Morgan Plowden and Cindy Cote of Canada advanced to the finals. For the men, Raymond Daniels got a chance to meet up with Ross Levine again and this time, there was no doubt that Daniels was the more experienced fighter. Daniels delivered a rather brutal message to Levine that was hard to misunderstand as Daniels defeated Levine and went on to the finals where he would face the lightweight Hamed Firouzi who won the other bracket.
Saturday countered the sunny day before as it brought a wet outlook with a torrential rain that took place overnight. After Friday's festivities, everyone was too tired to hear the storm the night before. A brisk walk to the tournament venue and it was time to go. Unfortunately, the poor weather caused an accident on one of the main highways to the event and a number of competitors were delayed and could not make it to most of the competition including Jadi Tention's contingency from New York. But the show must go on and the competition took place. In men's sparring, Jason Bourelly showed up and he was not in a Team Full Circle uniform. A quick confirmation from the Full Circle coach and it appears that Bourelly is now representing himself and his school. Bourelly ended up going to the final point sparring run offs as the 30 and over sparring grand championship.
There was some shuffling around in men's point fighting as people fought in different divisions. Joe Fife fought up so that teammate Robbie Lavoie could try to get a chance to fight Kyle Richards. It never happened as Richards fought in an unexpected division and lost an early round. Raymond Daniels fought as a middleweight because he thought teammate Carlos Tearney would fight in one of the heavier divisions but Tearney elected to fight in the 30 and over competition. The crazy mix up resulted in some interesting match ups and good footage.
Raymond Daniels, Ross Levine, Jason Bourelly and Hamed Firouzi were the remaining four men in the point sparring championships. One would be declared the grand champion. Daniels handily defeated the much smaller Firouzi in the first round. Levine faced Bourelly and in an interesting match, Bourelly's legs took over and Levine could not figure out a way around them. Bourelly was able to advance easily as Levine shook his head, frustrated by the defeat. In the final fight, it was Bourelly against Daniels in a match up that we have heard many times before. These two are friends as well as combatants but when they get into the ring, they work hard to outdo the other. This time, Bourelly was unable to give Daniels the challenge he needed as Daniels took the win 8-4 and was crowned the grand champion.
Three of the four horsemen of Team Paul Mitchell's men's weapons line up faced each other in the men's creative/musical/extreme (CMX) weapons grand championships. Marc Canonizado, Matt Emig and Kalman Csoka each wanted the win and took this competition seriously. But when it came down to it, Emig was on a roll that could not be stopped as he took the win over a strong performance by Csoka. The smiling Emig accepted his title with grace and charm.
The Finals
This year the goal for the finals was to highlight as many of the day time champions as possible within a reasonable amount of time - and to run off the professional youth divisions, some youth sparring and the Superfight finals. The evening opened with the demonstration by some of NASKA's finest including Matt Emig and Danny Etkin - both of whom won a contest where the prize was a chance to walk down the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the new Karate Kid movie.
The evening then moved on to some of the various demonstration performances by grand champion forms and weapons winners as they received their awards. Audrey Donihoo and Micayla Johnson were the girls traditional and CMX weapons grand champions. In the team divisions, 100% Performance won for team demo while Caitlin Dechelle and Marc Canonizado of Team Paul Mitchell won for synchronized teams. In the adult weapons competition, Jennifer Espina won for traditional weapons, Nikki Stanley was the traditional forms grand champion, Jarrett Leiker won for traditional weapons and Matt Emig was the men's CMX overall grand champion. Caitlin Dechelle was on stage representing the women for CMX forms and Will Cornell won for men's traditional forms. As mentioned before, Marc Canonizado successfully captured the men's CMX forms grand championship and Drew Bisbee was the 30 and over weapons grand champion.
Kids got a chance to get on stage for a few point sparring matches. Being on stage for sparring is rare so the kids really put on a show. Anisha Trappier and Ashley Dahlquist went down to the wire in their match for the girls 14-15 divisional title. They were tied 6-6 at the buzzer and in sudden victory overtime, Trappier scored to win. Sammy Shalon and Chris Garjulio were the winners in the 14-15 boys divisions and they faced each other for a small versus tall championship match. Shalon used his reach to claim the 5-3 victory. Rusty Clark faced off against Tyrei Brown for a 16-17 boys tall versus small match. Brown was scoring points at the beginning but then Clark started to catch up. With the time running out Clark was up by one point and decided to just blatantly walk out of the ring to run down the time. The center ref was having none of it and awarded Brown a point to tie the match and force the matter into sudden victory. In overtime, the two fighters clashed a few times with no clear point being scored. Then Brown scored with a hand technique to get the win in this emotional battle.
There were more opportunities for kids to get recognition and money on the stage with the professional divisions. A new invention from promoter Joe Greenhalgh - these divisions allowed kids to compete against each other for scholarship money - a rarity in sport karate events. In the 13 and under weapons professional competition, Ricky Morris was near perfect with his bo routine and was helped out with his win even more when challengers Andrew Franklin fell on a trick and Mackensi Emory stumbled. Micah Karns continued his winning ways with the 14-17 professional division forms title. In second place Tony Villaraso demonstrated that he is going to be a force to reckon with in the near future with Kyle Gallagher's traditional performance in third.
Jacob Pinto, Andrew Franklin and Danny Etkin turned up the heat with their flips and tricks in the 13 and under professional forms competition. In the end, Jacob Pinto won the first prize with Franklin in second and Etkin in third. In the 14-17 weapons competition, Micayla Johnson followed up her NASKA grand championship win with another win over Tyler Weaver who took second and Connor Griffith in third.
The New England Open wasn't all fighting and forms/weapons, there was also tricks with Vince Johnson and his illReality project. Four teams made it to the finals to compete for the cash prize. In round one, the powerhouse combo of Daniel Graham and Anis Cheurfa overame Team FF/FS while the innovation of Team DMV helped propel them into the finals to face Graham and Cheurfa. The final battle went the full three rounds with all the trickers jumping higher, spinning faster and trying harder with each pass. In the end, the judge selected Graham and Cheurfa for the top spot and $1000 prize while Team DMV went home with $500.
The adult fighting on the stage was the Superfight finals. Raymond Daniels faced Hamed Firouzi for a second time in the tournament. This time it was two rounds of hard hitting Superfighting. With Daniels outweighing Firouzi by quite a bit, it took a lot for Firouzi to make any impact on Daniels. By the end of the second round, Firouzi was fatigued and Daniels knew he had the win. The final score was 8-1 Daniels.
For the women, Morgan Plowden faced Canada's Cindy Cote. With the score at 4-2 for Cote in the first round, Plowden took a scary shot to the throat that caused her to start choking. Her father and coach, sport karate icon Richard Plowden, turned into father as he grabbed her worriedly. She recovered quickly and headed back into the ring. After the incident, Plowden got decidedly meaner and started to score some points. The first round ended 7-6 in favor of Plowden. Cote started to mount a comeback in the second round, actually pulling ahead at one moment but Plowden held her off and was able to finish the second round with a 16-14 score to take the win.
Finally, the New England Open started a new traditional - naming a Sport Martial Arts Icon - someone who has done so much in the sport, that the person embodies the sport. This year, Raymond Daniels was the recipient of the award. As we at SportMartialArts.com have always said about Daniels - you can love him or hate him but you know he will always entertain, evoke emotion, and get recognition for the sport by his performances. Richard Plowden provided the introduction of Daniels at the event and gave him lots of kudos - we do too as we congratulate him on this honor.
Forms, weapons, fighting, tricks - all had their place at the 2010 New England Open. Combined together, this year's event provided a balanced opportunity for competition with a tournament promoter who truly cares about the experience of the competitors. Congratulations to all who participated and good luck to the Celtics of course - I mean, it was practically in Boston AND during the NBA playoffs!! Take that Jack Felton, Raymond Daniels and all the west coast Lakers fans!!!
