What city or region has the best mma scene? I'm thinking in terms of shows, number of fighters\fans and overall buzz.
Bay Area/Sacramento We got Cesar Gracie/Skrap Pack, AKA and Alpha Male This is the home of StrikeForce and they were able to build into the #2 promotion in the US using mostly local talent and we got a huge local scene now days There are at least 2 but often times as many as 5 different local shows every weekend for you to choose from We have a new local promotion called Conquer FC that is starting to make waves on the local scene and will be known as a top quality regional promotion real soon Also Anderson-Chael 1 and UFC On Fox 7(most stacked action packed card in history) both took place here in the Bay
This isn't current, but for an interesting thing of history, the Indiana-Wisconsin area had a real good fighting circuit up until about 7 or 8 years ago. It had the Iron Heart Crown (Shooto's American league), HookNShoot, Freestyle Combat Challenge, the Total Fight Challenge, and a whole bunch of other shows. The ones in Indiana drew, like, 500-1500 people all the time (not bad numbers for local shows)-- this was even before the Ultimate Fighter boom-- and some events even drew around 4,500 people. Because of the American Shooto league, it also attracted- and grew a whole bunch of great fighters like Miguel Torres, Stephan Bonnar, JZ Cavalcante, Jeff Curran, Bart Palaszewski, Joe Pearson, Jason Chambers, Ryan Ackerman, and a whole bunch more. The circuit's apparently still pretty good. Miguel Torres still teaches there and helps put together fight cards and grappling shows and such, Darren Elkins trains there and had a lot of his early fights in the area, as does- and did Eddie Wineland, Ben Askren and the Roufusport team's there, Neil Magny was reared in the area (he might still live there, but I'm not sure), and there're a good amount of shows around there pretty often.
San Francisco Bay Area/Sacramento Nor*Cal region.. Bruce Lee once called the area home. Fairtex SF help start Faber, Diaz Bros, Gilbert, Jake, Smith, Munoz, Irvin, Castillo, the legend Alex Gong, etc.. AKA helped start BJ Penn, Cung Le, Rumble, plus guys like Phil Davis and Liam come out to train. Alpha Male and the Diaz Academy are MMA Camp powerhouses and train with one another. El Niño has their own fight team called Skrap Pack which attracts fighters such as Rousey, Yancy, Burkman, and Bobby Green to come train in SF. Plus Bunkerd from Fairtex has Fight and Fitness in SF and his son coaches at K1 Fitness. Up and comers like Josh Emmett, Jeremiah Labiano, Josh San Diego, Max Griffith, Chris Avila, Aspen Ladd, Paradise Vavosa, etc.. Fight teams such as Team Black MMA, and gyms like Dragon House MMA put on local events, while WFC and Gladiator Challenge continue to put out locally raised or locally based fighters who make it to One FC, the WSOF, Bellator and/or the UFC. Not only did Coker base his various MMA orgs out of the SF South Bay area, he also trained at Fairtex SF. Ralph Gracie has called SF his base operations for years, but many do not know that there are many Gracie gyms in the SF East Bay area, and Gracie Redding is putting out some nice am fighters right now, along with the team MMA Gold. The local Indian Gaming Casinos seemingly hold regional shows every weekend.. Old school guys remember going to King of the Cage and WEC events at open air venues at various Fairgrounds and Casinos, or going to the first Gladiator Challenge shows in the gymnasium of Kezar Stadium. Who could forget all the legendary fights that took place under the Strikeforce banner at the Shark Tank in San Jose?! I could go on and on, but reality is.. No other area has the MMA culture that we have.. Look at all of the fighters who have spent a time here in the Bay Area/Nor*Cal region for an extended period of time to train! Reality is in the facts!
Elkins is out in Sacramento at Team Alpha Male, has been the past two fights and moved his family out here too.. Magney has been out in Colorado for a few years now.
Currently? Some of the better regional promotions are in the Northeast and the South (Texas, New Mexico). Since RFA travels so much, the bigger regional promotions I can think of are Legacy (almost always has events in the southern states) and Cage Fury FC, CES and Ring of Combat are all based out of the Northeast. Overall? Nothing beats old school Iowa regional scene when guys were coming out of Miletich Fighting System in droves and they were producing some of the best mixed martial artists of the late 90's and early 00's.
