Event Report: Charity Battle 2012

In my [post here], I've mentioned something cool coming up. Never had the time to cover it afterwards, though. So despite the fact that it's been a month since then, I'll still fill you in on one of the coolest (imho) and most sensible event of the year:
The Shinergy[charity battle]@U4Behave

The idea

To sum the idea up in a nutshell, the event was all about fighting for something instead of fighting against something. To be more precise, the agenda was to fight for ZUKI, a charity organisation here in Austria that raises money for children in India. ZUKI is short for "Zukunft Kind", which translated roughly to "Future Children" - though that translation gives the whole thing a slightly different meaning. Anyhow, you can check out their homepage at www.zuki-zukunftfuerkinder.at

Ronny, founder and head of Shinergy[international], came up with the idea to promote a fight night where selected Shinergy competitors would meet in fightclub-style bouts. When I say the whole thing had a fightclub-like athmosphere, I'm referring to the location and setup - more on that later. Spectators would "bet" on the fights by buying either a blue or a red ticket. After the fight, there'd be a tombola between all the winning tickets. Prices would range from training gear over gym memberships to tickets for a conference on mental strength.

The event

To make things even more interessting, a rather untypical event location was chosen - the U4 club, one of Vienna's most famous music clubs. Bouts would take place on the dancefloor, surrounded by the audience, just like in the film "Fightclub". Scores would be projected directly to the video wall, so the audience had a clear vision on what was going on at all times. A rapper would fire up the fights with live-moderation.

Before the main fight, there was a life-act of Barbara Alli, a singer here in Vienna.

The fights

All in all, there were 5 fights:

Tino P. VS Frank Z.        (Winner: Tino P.)
Leyla A. VS Katrin D.    (Winner: Katrin D.)
Elias K. VS Tino P.        (Winner: Elias K.)
Harry S. VS Manuel A.    (Winner: Manuel A.)
Lukas P. VS Manuel E.    (Winner: Lukas P.)

Each fight was scheduled as a best-of-3 bout, so the first fighter to win two rounds would be declared the winner. Rounds can be won by either decision or TKO.

The visuals

I won't be posting any pictures here so as not to infringe any copyrights - you can find lots of photos [here], though.

The Support

Here, I need to thank Dominik - who's a fighter at my dojo and one of my best friends - for his great support. Whether is was entry music for the fighters, tech support for the judges, coaching me for the main fight... Dominik handled all of that and more perfectly well. Thanks, man, well done!

The Future

So, in future, there'll be more of those charity events. Next one's probably due in november. I hope to have a couple of my students compete there.

So, feel free to browse through the pictures on conny.at and tell me what you think about the whole thing in the comments section below. Looking forward to reading and discussing those comments!

So long,

take care