The first ever “Attica Take Down” Mixed Martial Arts event at Veterans Memorial Park in Attica was the place to be on Saturday.
Event Coordinator Dan Kirpatrick says the community and Full Contact Promotions came together really quickly to plan the “Attica Take Down” in about two months. He says he has never put together an event like this in his life.
After joking around with Attica Mayor Nathan Montford, who was a regular attendee at Full Contact Promotions events that were held at the Rochester Armory before it closed in March, Kirkpatrick moved forward with planning, gathering sponsors and asking for help from those in his hometown community.
“This kind of started out as a joke and the owners kind of let me run with it,” says Kirkpatrick.
“There’s a lot of wrestling history, lots of fighting history here, so it’s been kind of a cool thing to do. Thank God the owners Bubba and Judah Abid let me do it. They put up the money for it, they backed me a lot and the community came together, it’s been awesome.”
Kirkpatrick is known for his announcing in and around the ring in WNY. The 1993 Attica H.S. graduate started his career announcing the home Attica Blue Devil football games on Friday nights. For almost 10 years Kirkpatrick has been working with Full Contact Promotions announcing their Mixed Martial Arts events which is a known a proving ground for amateur fighters that are up and coming.
MIXED MARTIAL ARTS | FULL CONTACT PROMOTIONS | United States (rochesterfights.com)
Kirkpatrick says the event sold VIP seating which was sold out and there were a lot of walk-up tickets purchased on Saturday.
The first ever “Attica Take Down” featured high level Kickboxing and MMA with two matches that paid homage to WNY wrestling tradition, featuring four of the most highly recruited high school wrestlers in Section V and VI, with the winners vying for the Ed Romesser Memorial Championship.
Braidon Woodward declared winner
Video clip from August 19, 2023– Braidon Woodward and Zach Caldwell in the 170lb class
The main event tent was briefly damaged early Friday morning about 1:00am with a sudden gust of wind that took off the top of the tent, according to Attica Police Chief Dean Hendershott. The tent top was quickly replaced in time on Friday for the main event on Saturday.
“Everybody thought we were crazy for doing this, there were so many people that said we were nuts, it’ll never work, it’ll never work and damn this community came out. Everybody here seems to be having a good time, we’ve got a lot of beers being drank and a lot of food being eaten.”
According to Kirkpatrick, this is the 45th show for Full Contact Promotions, who originally started in a small church in Henrietta, NY.
“We have a cage in the middle of a park, in the middle of Attica, in the middle of nowhere, it’s a lot of fun.”
