Tag: Charles Rosa

As UFC featherweight [autotag]Charles Rosa[/autotag] dove under the cage to avoid any further potential gunfire, he was surprised at who else was there with him.

“Yo, what’s up?” Rosa told his brother, Lucas, who made his promotional debut earlier in the evening. “Did you see me go under here?”

“No, I just knew to go under the cage,” Lucas said.

“What are the chances?” Rosa responded. “There are like 500 people here, and you and I are the only ones under the cage.”

The events of that night certainly made brunch interesting the following day. There was plenty to talk about, but the conversation momentarily stopped when the server popped off a bottle of bubbly for mimosas. Rosa and his siblings couldn’t help but be startled.

“That f*cked us up for real,” Rosa said with a laugh when he spoke to MMA Junkie this week, four days after the incident. “It was like post-traumatic sh*t. We were like, ‘Holy sh*t.’ We all had the same reaction.”

Rosa and his siblings were just a few of the hundreds in attendance at a RIZE FC regional MMA event on March 20 at the Bamboo Room in Lake Worth, Fla. According to promoter Armando Gonzalez, the event was the promotion’s best to date – until the official decision for the main event, that is.

That’s when the mayhem began.

The headliner was an amateur bantamweight title fight between Filipe Valentim and short-notice replacement Ernesto Suarez. The referee stopped the fight in Round 2 when Valentim landed a series of strikes on the downed Suarez. The stoppage sent Suarez’s team and supporters into a frenzy. The defeat was the team’s third of the night, and they were not happy.

“That’s when everything just shattered,” Gonzalez told MMA Junkie. “The security team kind of defused it a little bit until the actual announcer announced the decision, a stoppage by TKO. At that point, it was when the chaos hit.”

What happened next

Verbal threats turned into violence as a scuffle broke out in the crowd. It didn’t take long for objects, including chairs and hookah bottles, to be flung every which way. What started out as a fun evening quickly spiraled into pandemonium.

“It was definitely one of the craziest fights I’ve ever seen,” Rosa said. “It was a brawl in the crowd. Especially since the chairs were getting thrown. I saw at least two or three chairs hit off people’s heads, which is random – people just whipping chairs. … I’ve been part of some things. I’ve gone through a lot of stuff in my life. I’ve even been shot at before, myself. But that was the craziest.”

The melee was lengthy. Rosa estimated it ensued for about a minute-and-a-half before cooler heads prevailed. However, heart rates quickly spiked when a man pulled out a firearm and shot into the ceiling.

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“At that point, it was just crazy that he would do that,” Gonzalez said. “Everything had already gotten stopped. Everybody was already pushed over to one side. Security guys had everybody held together. There was nobody around him. Nobody was even hitting him. Nobody was coming toward him. Nobody was doing anything around him that that would be the right thing to do. I don’t know why he did it.”

Cell phone video shows a white male, wearing blue jeans and a burgundy shirt, calmly reach into a handbag. As things start to simmer down, he pulls out a gun. Nobody seems to notice as he holds it by his side. Then he raises the gun above his head and fires one round.

Rosa, who was in the cage as a cornerman for Valentim, acted instinctively and dove under the cage to avoid any harm. While nobody was shot, not everyone was as successful as Rosa in avoiding injury.

‘I thought I lost my eye’

John Rivera, a former fighter, served as a judge for the event. Upon the gunman firing off a round into the air, he locked eyes with Rivera. The man Rivera was restraining turned out to be the shooter’s son.

“There are no words that describe how horrific, how upsetting and how traumatic it’s been for me, personally,” Rivera told MMA Junkie. “I’m not going to forget it. I’m not going to forget the event, nor the gunman. He was looking at me while I’m looking his son against the wall, restraining his son. If it wasn’t for two individuals grabbing him, I might not be speaking to you right now, to be honest. I looked him dead eye for eye.”

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The image is still ingrained in Rivera’s mind days later. He said he struggles with post-traumatic stress not only because of his encounter with the shooter, but also because of injuries he sustained in the fracas. Rivera was one of three people injured that night. He was hit in the eye with a chair by a woman who, multiple people say, was associated with the shooter.

“I’m still trying to deal with the acceptance of the situation,” Rivera said. “It’s hurtful. Coming from a fighter’s standpoint, a retired one’s, how the criteria of our spectators have changed and how even how fighters act, words cannot explain what I witnessed this past weekend. I’ve never, in all my 43 years in martial arts, and my 30th year as a fight professional, ever seen such chaos ever break out.”

In addition to emotional trauma, Rivera is now dealing with severe headaches, blurred vision, head and neck pain, and potential corneal and retinal damage. He fears his eyesight might be permanently damaged and can’t believe the individuals responsible for the mayhem weren’t apprehended quickly.

“I’m appalled and disgusted at how or why the people were not restrained who caused the damage, who started the altercation, who agitated that altercation,” Rivera said. “It’s truly appalling.”

Shooter at large

As for the man who fired the gun, and the people who flung chairs, they were still at large as of Thursday, Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office media relations director Teri Barbera told MMA Junkie. The department has issued an all-points bulletin that detectives are “seeking to identify” the shooter. The APB states that the man is “believed to have discharged a weapon inside and outside of the Bamboo Room.”

Rivera wishes the man and others responsible would turn themselves in.

“For the individuals, please come forward,” Rivera said. “Mistakes do happen. You weren’t thinking correctly. That’s OK. We’re able to forgive. But the longer you go in hiding, the worse it’s going to be. I’m a very compassionate individual. I’m an honorable individual. I’m sorry this had to happen, but innocent people could’ve gotten hurt a lot worse than I have.”

How this happened and what will be done about it

What happened on March 20 was unfortunate, but Gonzalez said strict security measures were in place. According to Gonzalez, the promotion had eight of its own security guards at the event. There were also two undercover police officers in the crowd, and the venue had a security team of its own. Despite this, an older woman’s handbag was not searched upon entry – and it happened to be the one with the firearm.

“We’ve never let down our security standards or safety standards at all,” Gonzalez said. “Unfortunately, the venue had guys that were searching and were (using metal detectors on) individuals at the front door. She was 60 to 70 years old, and they didn’t check her purse. There it was. There were even a few individuals who got told they couldn’t bring their firearms inside. They were turned around and told to go back.”

Rosa backed Gonzalez’s assessment and said the event had an abundance of safety measures in place. After the group saw the security precautions being taken at the front door, someone in Rosa’s party had to put his firearm back in his car.

Although he thinks what happened that night was out of his control, Gonzalez has decided to increase security measures for his next event. RIZE FC spokesperson Michael Feinberg issued a video statement Tuesday in which he promised greater security detail and a strict “no-bags” policy going forward.

Rivera seemingly approved of the new RIZE FC measures and hopes it can serve as a wake-up call for regional events moving forward. More security and less alcohol is Rivera’s hope for all Florida combat sports events.

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Big takeaway

At the end of the day, MMA events are supposed to be fun for those in attendance. The foundation for the sport, regional MMA relies on passionate fanbases of local athletes. Gonzalez, Rosa, and Rivera agree the violence, however, needs to stay in the cage.

“This serves as a good basis to let the fans know why we do this, and this is what happens when people get rowdy,” Gonzalez said. “… (The fight) doesn’t roll into the crowd. It doesn’t have to go into a fighter throwing a chair. It doesn’t have to go into a fan throwing drinks at fighters because their favorite fighter lost. Those measures don’t have to be taken.

“We put these events on for the fans so they can go out, drink, have fun and enjoy fights, and watch their favorite fighters. It’s not so if they lose they can become sore losers and start throwing chairs.”

Gonzalez is optimistic about the future and has no doubt the next RIZE FC event will be a return to normalcy: high class, exciting, and entertaining for all involved. That’s the reputation Rosa and Rivera indicated Gonzalez has built over the years.

“We’re good, man,” Gonzalez said. “I can’t wait to do the next one.”