Shootfighters - The Movie

For a little while now the trailers for the documentary "Shootfighters" have been available, a tantalising taster for what looked to be a thoughtful short film on the life of local show fighters.  Of course the clincher for me was that it's based around Leicester Shootfighters and FightUK, a Leicester based promotion.

The full film is now available on Vimeo and I write this post having just watched it.  Richard Butterworth's film is thirty minutes long and takes as its focus Aiden Hayes, a young fighter from Leicester Shootfighters.  We learn a lot about Aiden, primarily through pieces to camera by his Dad and his older brother.  We learn that he was expelled from school(s) and that boxing, and subsequently MMA, gave him a purpose/focus/discipline that set him on a more positive path.

The film follows Aiden from an amateur MMA fight - against a much heavier opponent - through the training for his next fight.  There is lots of training footage; we see Aiden running, wrestling, doing pad work, Jits and conditioning, and talking about the sacrifices fighters make in order to do what they do, even at an amateur level.  It's an indictment of those proponents of the view that MMA is just legitimised thuggery, especially when you see the sheer amount of training that even local show fighters undertake to compete.

Leicester Shoot Head Coach Nathan Leverton also features and provides his usual insightful and incisive commentary on the evolution and present state of MMA, as well as an interesting comparison of winning an MMA bout as opposed to a grappling tournament.

The film feels well put together and follows an interesting narrative using Aiden's journey to illustrate what MMA is all about.  Colour and insight is added by the pieces from the FightUK guys and Nathan as well as Aiden's family.  I don't want to give the ending, such as it is, away, but I would urge you to give it a look.  It won't be a wasted half-an-hour, and if you fight, train or even just attend local shows you might recognise something in what you see.