Fighting Average is a Documentary about one man’s journey to rediscover himself through his love of Mixed Martial Arts.
Back in 2010, Jeremy Brand and I came up with an idea about taking an average guy who loves the sport of MMA and have him actually train and eventually fight as an amateur. Jeremy didn’t want to be that guy so I decided to be the the guinea pig and give it a try. Instead of me just blogging about it, we thought it would be cool to make it into a little MMASucka.com documentary.
In a nutshell we didn’t know how to film a documentary so we found a couple of people who had just graduated from film school to help us. Shelley Morten and Steve Pojitski at VanWest Films loved our idea. Once we had that important piece in place, Jeremy and I got other local people involved like Don Whitefield of West Coast MMA and the local MMA promotion Battlefield Fight League.
Vancouver in 2011 and 2012 had a different MMA landscape than it does now. As you will see in the documentary there were local politicians who were still living in the 90s when it came to their understanding of mixed martial arts. What we wanted to show was that MMA was not a barbaric sport and that the fighters were all gracious and wonderful human beings.
To be honest, I never thought this film would ever see the light of day. It did film festivals but couldn’t be released publicly due to some legalities. I won’t go into it. It was a very frustrating and discouraging process. I pretty much gave up on it and wrote it off.
Thankfully, VanWest films has allowed MMASucka.com to show the film that we put together back in 2011. Sure it’s a little dated now and I think I’m a completely different person than I was when it was shot, but the message still remains.
Of course none of this would have been possible with out Battlefield Fight League who gave me the opportunity to compete in their cage; I will always be appreciative of that. I also want to thank Colin Noppers of Dominant Ground for hooking me up with gear all those years ago. I also want to thank Reign Sports who also helped me out with fight gear – they make good quality stuff. Klench Mouthguards for giving me a custom mouth piece. My friend Terry Wilson for putting together music for me when we lost the rights to the other music we liked.
Last but not least VanWest Films for putting in the time to film this. I want to thank Jeremy Brand of MMASucka.com and my family and friends for supporting me back in the day while I went through all of this.
Overall I was happy with the project. I got to experience something that many wouldn’t dare dream of. It taught me a lot about myself and showed me that it takes a certain type of athlete to compete in this sport. Fighting Average allowed me to look inside of myself and learn something new and I hope when you watch this you’ll learn a little bit about me as well.
Thanks for watching.
Trevor Dueck @TrevDueck
