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MT. PLEASANT, Mich. — The fictional hockey world had the Hanson brothers, a bespectacled trio who came to the Charlestown Chiefs from the North American Hockey League, where gooning it up was a way of life. The nonfictional Ice Wars, which came into existence with its first-ever event this past Saturday at the Soaring Eagle Resort and Casino in the middle of central Michigan, has the LaPorte brothers, Nick and Will, 6-foot-6 hockey specimens who throw hands more for simple pleasure.
It was a wild scene in Mt. Pleasant for the inaugural event, which functioned as an arm of the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship. It had been dubbed Ice Wars: Battle of the Border. The center of the action was a miniature 800-square foot rink, known as the Ice Box, enclosed by pliable wooden boards. Along the side sat the VIPs, who were close enough to the action at times to whisper sweet nothings into the bleeding ears of the combatants. The ice lay like a sheet of porcelain, virginal in its whiteness, yet ominous too — as if quietly anticipating a crime scene.
In fact, if you looked closely, you’d see that it wasn’t ice at all; it was “synthetic ice,” which is an elegant way of saying plastic.
The only thing frozen in the room were the daiquiris up top. Had a Zamboni come through it would have wrecked the whole rig.
Each one of the 20 total fighters — half of them Canadians, the other half American — made the walk across a stage and through fountains of shooting sparks. They wore blade protectors on their skates, which they slipped out of as they pulled up ice-side, the way UFC fighters remove their shirts. The referees, sporting helmets and striped shirts just like you’d see in an NHL game, made the scene almost comical. All the familiarity of hockey with nary a puck or a stick in sight.
The fighters wore gaudy yellow hockey jerseys, which could be spotted from the nosebleeds easy enough. Not that there were nosebleeds. The ballroom was intimate, with a seating capacity just over 2,000, and more than 1,800 of those seats filled with curious onlookers, many of whom delighted in the novel approach of taking the game of hockey out of the fighting.
“I’ve had fights in MMA, and this is the most fun fighting I’ve ever had in my life,” super heavyweight Zach Hughes told me perhaps 45 minutes after he got flattened by Catlin Big Snake, a.k.a. “The Chief,” a slab of humanity from Alberta who not so long ago dressed for the Monroe Moccasins of the Western Professional Hockey League. “All the guys here are great. Me and ‘Chief’ have already been sitting here bulls***ing after the fight.”
The founder of Ice Wars, Charlie Nama, warned me that it's a different vibe than other combat sports. That the guys who were swinging hammers at each other’s heads would be drinking beers together within an hour of the stitches being cinched. He wasn’t wrong. The bar was full of barroom brawlers who just happen to know how to skate, most of them based north of the Great Lakes. Many of them had lush playoff beards too, even if the closest playoff team to Mt. Pleasant was over a thousand miles away in Edmonton.
After each introduction, the players skated forward in the Ice Box, circling each other just like you’d seen when they drop gloves in the sanctioned hockey world. You could feel the spirit of “Tie Domi” bouncing off the walls. Then they’d start swinging, which can be exhilarating for an offshoot combat sport that isn’t entirely sanctioned.
In fact, it’s not sanctioned at all!
(Except for in Wyoming.)
Nobody was losing time thinking about taboos or niches, though, because the rounds are 90-second affairs, and this is an action league. The fighters would grab a fistful of jersey, then jostle each other toward their incoming fists. Lots of jerking, twisting and thrashing, a sadistic little tango. The fists crashing off of helmets fast and furious. Uppercuts finding a home for those who tried to plant their head into a chest. Short, quick punches, looping right hands. Guys wincing, skating off with dangling arms. Holding their rib cages from unexpected body shots, or from crashing into the synthetic ice. There was blood which had to be squeegeed off from time to time.
If there was a surprise, it was that the first three fights all went to decisions, because the idea of Ice Wars is to create knockouts. Viral knockouts. The kind of thing that might grab attention when sliding down a scroll.
The first finish came when Nick LaPorte, one of the twins who happens to be a cast member on the Canadian television show “Shoresy,” scored a TKO over Matt “Dunner” Dunn. The crowd let up a tremendous roar as he got his hand raised. LaPorte had predicted to me he’d finish his opponent in 11 seconds the night prior while crushing a pizza at the Soaring Eagle food court, which turned out to be ambitious. As it stood, he did so in just under a minute.
“The ice was a little tougher than I thought,” Laporte said afterward, showing me a fun cartoon graphic he’d made which said “Dunn in One” on his phone. “I had to get moving around a bit just to get a little bit more of an edge. After that, nah, it went exactly as I thought it would. I thought it was going to be quick and it went exactly like I thought.”
As for the judges, three of them sat at opposite corners of the Ice Box. There was four-time Stanley Cup champion Darren McCarty of the Detroit Red Wings, who had a stringy Layne Staley-like braid in his beard (which was pink). McCarty made a name for himself when he made Claude Lemieux turtle up in a fight at Joe Louis Arena. At one point, when a kid named Andre Thibault from the French-Canadian league (a veteran of hundreds of fights) shoved Elias Thompson’s head over the boards near where McCarty was stationed, the Detroit legend turned and gave an approving nod to his fellow judge sitting down the way.
That would be Jon “Nasty” Mirasty, one of the meanest SOBs to ever play hockey. He was notorious for laughing during his fights, which were plenty. He spent time on the Danbury Thrashers, a minor league team which inspired a documentary about the style of play (fights, fights and more fights). He was still rocking his traditional mohawk, and his nose lay a little crooked across his face.
The last judge was Frank “The Animal” Bialowas, who racked up his share of penalty minutes too. He played four games for Toronto Maple Leafs and had 12 penalty minutes. In 1993 alone, he had 352 penalty minutes while playing with the St. John’s Maple Leafs.
“I’ve fought everybody there is,” he told me.
And when I inquired about the scoring criteria, well, let’s just say it’s based more on expert gut feeling than anything scientific. There is no 10-point must system in Ice Wars. That kind of thing bores the hell out of enforcers on the ice. The fights are judged as whole, rather than round-by-round. “You just know who won,” Bialowas told me when elaborating. “You can tell.”
Were there moments when Ice Wars felt like a smoker show? Sure. There was a fog layer hanging over the synthetic ice surface, and there were a few “kick his ass Seabass” and “U.S.A.” chants to be heard. The low-rent nature of a first show wasn’t without charm. And there was royalty there, too. Thomas “Hitman” Hearns — the “Motor City Cobra” himself — sat up close to the action, watching a subgenre of the fight game find out if it has any legs.
What was the man who stood toe-to-toe with Marvin Hagler in one of the greatest boxing matches of our lifetimes thinking as jerseys were being pulled over heads?
The only thing he’d offer was a gentle smile.
And in the end, it was a fight between Bay City’s own Ryan Snobeck and Alex Marchisell — or “Marchy” as he’s known up in the Great White North — that whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Snobeck had showed up in a patriotic speedo for the weigh-ins, so you knew he meant business. He and "Marchy" latched on and swung at range, mercilessly, absorbing whatever the other was willing to dish out.
The entire crowd stood. The commentary team of former UFC fighters Ian Heinisch and Chris Camozzi provided the soundtrack, as their play-by-play boomed over the speakers for everyone to hear. Including the principals themselves, who just kept slamming fists into the meat spots. It was a frenzied moment that perhaps showed the potential of what Ice Wars could be if enough caution is thrown to the wind.
“I had 52 friends show up,” Snobeck told me after. “I had a high-school cheering section, and I did each of their tickets individually at the will call. I even did the seating chart for them. I wanted everybody to sit next to somebody that they enjoyed. I took a lot of pride in this whole thing.
“And when I met Alex, which I believe was Friday during the whole weigh-in, I said, ‘let’s put on a great show and throw punches,’ and we shook each other’s hand and that was it. That was it.”
Can Ice Wars catch on? It’s too early to tell, but the first show had its moments. One of my favorites was when Camozzi brought his BKFC belt over to face off with Esteban Rodriguez, and things got physical. Each fighter began leaning into the other, like linemen colliding at the line of scrimmage, and they were putting hands on each other with a shared thought running between them as the tussle dragged on — is somebody going to break this up?
It turned out, no, nobody was going to break it up. Everybody just stood and watched. They tussled for at least 20 to 30 seconds, an eternity, with Camozzi at one point putting his hand around Rodriguez’s neck. Each looked around for the intervention.
Finally, somebody did step in, but it was a classic moment of a fledgling show. Some of the kinks will need to be worked out. Saturday's event will debut on the BKFC app on Wednesday. The second card will take place in Alberta in two weeks. In a couple of months, Ice Wars will have a show in Tampa, which they promise will be the first with real ice. After all, you can’t be the Ice Wars if you’re fighting on plastic. Ice is central to the equation.
And so are the cult figures. The fictional world of hockey had the Hanson brothers, who put foil on their knuckles and roughed up vending machines. If Ice Wars can produce anything like the real-life equivalent?
Well, that’s what Charlie Nama and company are hoping to find out.
