Couple guys I got to spar are on the Truax vs. Vanda card tonight

The entire fight card: http://www.ofights.com/boutsheet.html

Watch the stream starting at 7pm CST: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/omega-presents - $19.99


First off, I wanted to share with the standup community about a fight happening in Minnesota tonight that is considered the biggest fight in Minnesota history. There's some interesting story lines at play. Minnesota doesn't get much respect as a state in the boxing world, but Matt Vanda has been the named guy from here for quite sometime. He has the whole badboy persona, part of a motorcycle gang, etc etc but as you will see on Wikipedia there is no shame in his boxing game, went up against Chavez Jr a couple times, and tonight is his last fight. He's facing off against Caleb Truax, who recently went the distance with Jermain Taylor and knocked him down, but lost the decision. Caleb is considered one of the top prospects in MN right now, and he's risking his stock against Matt Vanda tonight.

But a couple guys I'm pulling for are two fighters who showed up at our gym the past two weekends and sparred with us. Jon Schmidt and Charles Meier. Sparring these guys was fun, and it was funny to think these guys had a fight coming up and they were at my gym messing around with my amateur ass, but all that aside they were just good people. Talking to Jon Schmidt I found out he's searching for redemption and his big shot again after taking a bad first round loss to Shawn Estrada in SoCal. You can pull the youtube video of him getting beat, and Teddy Atlas talking shit all about the fighters from MN. Jon really has it on his shoulders now to be the guy to prove him wrong and is fighting for that redemption. Charles Meier on the other hand is a cool story because he started boxing as a 23 yearold and is now 39. He's 10 pro fights in, and you can tell he's in it just for the love of the game. Tonight is his first night as the Co-Main event, so that's pretty cool...

EDIT:
Result - Caleb Truax won the decision, Jon Schmidt got TKO'd in round 1, Charles Meier got the decision.

 

I actually fought on the same card as some of these guys when they were amateurs.

Small world.