Where on other evenings at the Starlight Bowl would have been an overture, last night there were recordings of Snoop Dogg, hammering through his raps. Mixed martials arts had come to the landmark Balboa Park facility.
It came successfully enough, with a program of six bouts offered by Total Combat, a San Diego enterprise, attracting a crowd promoter Diana Ocampo estimated at from 2,000 to 2,500.
In the main event, Edgar Garcia of Yuma and Waylon Kennel of San Diego engaged in a protracted toe-to-toe first-round exchange that continued until Kennel (3-1) began to sag. At that point, the match was stopped with Garcia declared a TKO winner at 3:46 of the round.
Kennel says he engages in MMA for the fun of it. He could not have had much fun last night. “But he hit me,” Garcia said. “My heart came through.”
Ocampo said she would like to present other MMA shows in the park. “We're San Diego,” she said. “You have the Chargers, the Padres and now you have Total Combat.”
Ocampo was doing MMA before it was hot, even before it was sanctioned in California in 2005. In 2003, she and a partner presented their first show at “Baby Rock,” a club in Tijuana.
“We had a crowd of about 1,200, and 90 percent of the crowd had come across the border from San Diego,” Ocampo said.
The evening had an explosive beginning with Frank Lester, a 185-pounder from San Diego, knocking out Cosmo Childs, also of San Diego, at 2:22 of the first round with one punch. Childs was down for at least a minute.
Saul Galindo, a 155-pounder from San Diego, won even more swiftly than Lester had, taking down Arron Mazon of San Gabriel and belaboring him until the bout was stopped after 1:39 of the opening round.
Josh Williams, a slender battler from El Cajon, ran his record as a 155-pounder to 5-1 by applying a rear neck choke hold that caused Mike Delatorre of Imperial Beach to submit after 62 seconds of the second round. After being abused in the opening round, Delatorre (6-2) rallied in the following round until Williams worked a reversal and wrung a concession from his rival.
Anybody blinking could have missed a match at 215 pounds between Tony Velarde of Chula Vista and Jose Rodriguez of San Diego. When Rodriguez rushed him, Velarde caught him coming in with a right. Rodriguez fell heavily. Time of knockout: 21 seconds.
In a duel waged mainly on the ground that drew some hoots from the crowd, Pat Speight, a 165-pounder from San Diego, came away with a majority decision over David Gardner of Temecula. Speight's victory was his seventh without defeat. Gardner, the most experienced of last night's contestants, is 13-9.
Jerry Magee: (619) 293-1830; jerry.magee@uniontrib.com
