Tom Lawlor loves the fight game’s margins. He likes watching the 7-foot-2 Hong Man Choi fight a 150-pound monk like Yi Long in a stand-up rules, single nine-minute round in China, with the specification that a KO is the only way to win it. He gets positively high when Long lands a spinning back kick to Choi’s nuts, and that’s how the story ends. There’s something about the absurd that belongs in the fight game, when the lunatic’s laughter drowns out all other noise in the theater. That’s what Tom likes.
“It’s awesome,” he says. “I’m not sure you’ll find footage of that [Long-Choi] fight, it was a MAS fight, but you can find the KO.