In only his first fight of his career, Anthony Cassar has already gotten the full regional MMA experience.
The packed arenas during Big Ten Championships and National Title matches bring an environment few others can duplicate. Being the visiting team at Carver-Hawkeye Arena can come with hostility few others can duplicate. Cassar can now attest, being backstage at a regional MMA show during faceoffs in his MMA debut can bring them both together before even stepping in the cage.
When Joe Penafiel took exception to opponent Denis Palancica’s smirk backstage following their faceoff, he took advantage of the emotion and lack of security and gave Cassar and crew an experience most fans and even fighters in today’s game only hear about in legend.
“There was two little guys mouthing off to each other and one guy came up and knocked the water out of his hands,” Cassar laughed. “It was on at that point and the people who were trying to break it up were not doing a very good job of it and so it just continued to escalate when it didn’t have to.”
Remaining clear of the melee, Cassar watched as what should have been a 8-10 second scuffle turn into about a minute-and-a-half of violence before the fight. As human as he is, Cassar admits with a smile and a shrug that he enjoyed watching the mess once he saw that his opponent was in no danger of becoming involved.