On a spring morning in Solana Beach, 22 miles north of downtown San Diego, 20 fighters wake in a Holiday Inn. They make their way through the hotel, past the reception, and out onto the street, where their coach Marc Fiore awaits with a message. This morning, there will be no training on the sand, under the sun; with rare rain pouring down, the fighters’ training session instead starts under the concrete shelter of a parking garage.
When the aspiring mixed martial artists gratefully accepted an invitation from Graham Boylan, CEO of Europe’s leading promotion Cage Warriors, and entertainment company Mola to take part in a life-changing fight programme in California, there would have been more daydreams of palm trees than parking lots. Then again, every fighter here dreams of being locked in a cage to compete, so the confines of a greyscale, underground, makeshift training space will suffice. After all, this is little more than an inconvenient disruption from a typical day at MMA Fight Academy.
