Mary Pilon: Scott DiPonio raced to make sure everything was in order — the fighters were ready, the ring girls were on time and the Bud Light was cold.
DiPonio was a local promoter who organized amateur cage fights that looked more like barroom brawls than glitzy Las Vegas bouts. With a mix of grit, sweat and blood, the fights had caught on in rural Michigan, and DiPonio’s Feb. 2 event, called Caged Aggression, drew hundreds of fans, even with cage-side seats going for $35.
Charlie Rowan, an undistinguished heavyweight, was scheduled to fight that night at Streeters, a dank nightclub that hosted cage fights in Traverse City.
Rowan’s cage name was Freight Train, but he was more like a caboose — plodding and slow, a bruiser whose job was to fill out the ring and get knocked down.
He was what the boxing world used to call a “tomato can.” Where the term comes from is unclear, but perhaps it’s as simple as this: knock a tomato can over, and red stuff spills out.
Rowan certainly wasn’t in it for the money. He was an amateur who loved fighting so much he did it for free.
An hour before the Caged Aggression fights began, DiPonio’s cellphone rang. It was Rowan’s girlfriend, so frantic she could hardly get the words out, DiPonio said. He asked her to take a deep breath, and, on the verge of tears, she told him that Rowan had crashed his car. He was being airlifted to a hospital. It didn’t look good.
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