Mr Dojo Rising ... Meet MMA's hardest Nutt

My latest piece in the South China Morning Post, on the full mental racket that is Full Metal Dojo, a potent cocktail of brutal cagefights, hot girls, hard rock, full beards and cold beer. Jon Nutt is the Dojo's high priest of hucksterism and hype. I meet him in 'the coolest city in the world' - Bangkok, says Nutt - to get the lowdown on throwdowns, takedowns, staredowns, and shakedowns, not to mention System of a Down.  Link to the SCMP story is here: http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1857244/mixed-martial-arts-and-rocknroll-hit-thailand

SWASH & TURNBUCKLES: JON NUTT, MODERN DAY
SAMURAI AND PIRATE OF PIZZAZ MEETS PT BARNUM AT THE NEW
 CIRCUS FOR MODERN GLADIATORS, FULL METAL DOJO

Jon Nutt has a reddish beard and a piratical air, although he professes no family connection to the 17th-century English pirate who cut a swathe through Newfoundland and Labrador before his capture in 1623.

The latter-day Nutt is content with cutting a swathe through the world of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) with his Full Metal Dojo show, which he somewhat breathlessly extols as the ‘fastest growing show on the planet, in the fastest growing sport on the planet, in the coolest city on the planet’ – his adopted home of Bangkok.

The most recent incarnation of Full Metal Dojo, two weeks ago, was held in the Sukhumvit Soi 12 club Insanity, formerly known as Insomnia, packing in a capacity crowd in excess of 600 people.
The first, although probably not the second, of the two conditions is almost certainly a boon in the world of MMA, a fighting style which sees two men or women of more or less equal weight (although often from wildly different fighting backgrounds) enter an octagonal cage and, with few rules and no holds barred, ‘get it on’ over three to five five-minute rounds.

The fighting discipline reached its global apotheosis with the show Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), in which the leading exponents must bring to the ring a mix of striking and grappling skills to have any chance of success.

Full Metal Dojo follows a similar model, although Nutt has made it his mission to spice up the showbiz pizzazz; his shows are a full metal racket that combines the bareknuckle fighting with hucksterism, live bands, DJs and copious quantities of food and booze. The Insanity show, Full Metal Dojo VI – For Those About to Rock, was the sixth outing in just over a year for the Full Metal Dojo machine – justification, in Nutt’s world, for his seemingly rather ambitious and exaggerated claim.

WAI A SWORD?  JON NUTT PERFORMS AN ARCANE RITUAL
 IN THE DOJO INVOKING THE WARRIOR SPIRIT OF THE SAMURAI,
BEFORE PERFORMING A SEK LOSO SONG, HIP HOP STYLE

Six weeks earlier, Full Metal Dojo V took place on Bangkok’s outskirts, at a venue called Live House, tucked away in a warren of local bars with bands, art-and-craft shops and independent fashion boutiques known as JJ Green, near the popular Chatuchak Weekend Markets.

I walked into Live House, after 60 minutes wandering in fruitless if entertaining circles trying to find the place, to see a fight start and end, with a brutal uppercut and a knee to the head, inside four seconds.

The Boys From Bangkok

This story ran recently in the Sunday Morning Post in Hong Kong. It's the story of four gentlemen who have forgotten more than most of us know about movies and television, and a lazy Sunday afternoon spent on reminiscences, predictions and looking back, rarely in anger, at their various careers on stage, silver screen and goggle box. 


'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' was a game which captured the popular imagination for a time. The universal law that underpinned it was that you could link any celebrity back to Kevin Bacon in six moves or fewer, thus illustrating the incestuous and tangled web that connects the entertainment world, or perhaps just the ubiquity of the Footloose star.

BANGKOK LANGOROUS: (L-R) JIM NEWPORT, KEVIN 'BIG NUTS'
CHISNALL, MARK HAMMOND AND LES NORDHAUSER
CHILLING AT THE FRIESE-GREEN CLUB. photo: William Vaughan

Between the four gentlemen gathered in Bangkok's Friese-Green Club, a private cinema club in Sukumvit Soi 22, one or perhaps two moves would do the trick.

Collectively, the fellows sipping iced water and exchanging the latest showbiz banter, have done just about every conceivable job in the film, television and theatrical worlds in the course of four very different but equally colourful careers. They have mixed it with the best of Hollywood and European cinema, but choose to base themselves in Bangkok, at least when their peripatetic work schedules allow.

All are true believers that the Asian Century which is upon us marks this part of the world as the place to be for opportunities, challenges and buzz, bullish that the best is yet to come for the silver screen in the Land of Smiles. And each has a well-stocked supply of anecdotes about their lives in entertainment that would keep the most casual cinephile enthralled for hours.

Greenlight Films boss Les Nordhauser, Soho Films partner Mark Hammond, special effects wizard Kevin 'Big Nuts' Chisnall, and ace production designer, published author and self-professed 'blues shouter' Jim Newport have the easy cameraderie of men who have been in the trenches together.