issue 223
November 2025
June 29, 2019 – Hammersmith Apollo, London
Cage Warriors: Night of Champions
By Brad Wharton
Prize fighting is a business built on blood. And if the customer is always right, it should come as no surprise that many of MMA’s most memorable moments are those caked in the red stuff. In the summer of 2019, Cage Warriors presented its second-ever ‘Night of Champions.’ It was an evening of ultraviolence at Hammersmith’s legendary Apollo Theatre, brought to a close by a literal bloodbath as welterweight champion Ross Houston took on interim champ Nicolas Dalby.
June 29th, 2019, saw the UK temperature hit a record high for the year; a brutal, oppressive heat that thickened the London air. Inside the venue, with eleven bouts already in the books and thousands of fans drinking, sweating, and cheering their way through four hours of action without an air-conditioning unit in sight, the humidity had made grappling a nightmare.
ROUND 1
Drawing from his Karate background, the Dane started the bout using linear movement to slide in and out of striking range while landing flurries of punches and kicks. One such entry allowed Houston to get a hold of him, though, pumping a knee up the middle before maneuvering his man to the cage.
The Scot went to work in close, making Dalby carry his weight while chipping away with short shots, one of which landed right on the money, causing instant swelling around the right eye. The escape came, but at the expense of a spinning backfist. Dalby continued to manage the range well with his footwork and straight punches, before surprisingly rushing in to clinch up. Houston tried to parley his overhooks into a lateral drop throw but found himself back to the mat as Dalby countered and came crashing down on top of him.
GETTING BLOODY
The UFC veteran dropped some elbows, but Houston was able to power his way back to a standing position, eventually landing an elbow and some punches of his own in a wild exchange as the pair separated. He shot for a takedown, but suddenly, blood was everywhere. Dalby was sporting a deep gash that was two inches long and wide enough to stick a couple of pound coins in. It was a gusher.
After a brief check from the cage side Doctor, the action continued, but Dalby’s face and chest were slick with crimson. It dripped down onto the vinyl mat, pooling around the fighter’s feet and instantly affecting their purchase. Houston was taken down and immediately faced another issue: a waterfall of red stuff cascading into his eyes. Back on his feet, he traded a satisfying uppercut for another rapid volley of punches as the frame ended.
PATCH-UPS
It wasn’t just the cutmen going to work between rounds. As Dalby had Vaseline spooned into his head wound, attendants with towels were scrambling to absorb the puddles of blood in the cage. A pair of big right hands stunned Houston early in the second, shattering his nose and sending blood spurting out of his nostrils. Dalby took the top position. Both were covered in plasma from head to chest, and as it spilled onto the fighting surface, the cage became a slip ‘n’ slide. Creating traction to pass guard or create leverage for strikes was becoming impossible; every scramble ended with the pair collapsing into a pile of flailing limbs. Houston ended up on all fours, his nose absolutely destroyed and spitting mouthfuls of blood onto a surface that already looked like a butcher’s slab, as Dalby finished strong. This time, it was the Scot who was forced to endure the painful limbo of an inspection by Dr Chris Lam, but, as before, the damage was deemed superficial.
BRUTALITY ON SHOW
Dalby, head butchered and eye almost swollen shut. Houston, nose plastered across his face and unable to breathe. The cage floor is dyed pink. It looked like a crime scene, and we hadn’t even hit the championship rounds. Cutmen John Tandy and Ciaran Duffy - two of the best in the game - had done their best, but it didn’t take long for the taps to start running. The shocking level of blood had overshadowed the now horrendous heat and humidity in the venue. With his nose in tatters and mouth hanging wide open, the toll it was taking on Houston suddenly became clear to see. He collapsed to the mat, exhausted, but was able to pop back to his feet when Dalby slipped in a pool of blood while attempting to kick his legs. The interim champ landed a pair of crushing knees out of nowhere, slumping his foe like a puppet with its strings cut. The Dane pounced, unloading heavy punches that prompted an urgent warning from referee Marc Goddard for Houston to defend. The blood was making it easier said than done. With virtually zero friction, Houston was forced to fling his bodyweight in different directions to evade the incoming blows. Dalby again fell on top of him, but Goddard moved in to call a time-out.
WARRIOR SPIRIT
Dalby stood over his man, his face a crimson mask, looking incredulously down at the prone Houston as the doctor was asked to check his nose. He’d been opened up across the bridge now, and the structure was visibly disjointed. The Dane’s injury was only getting worse, too, pouring viscous, red claret that mixed with his sweat and cascaded down his body, giving him the look of a horror movie extra.
“This is fucking ridiculous!” barked Goddard as he directed the cage crew to once again clean the blood-stained floor. With both men wanting to fight on and the doctor adamant it was safe, the ref would have to make a tough call. With less than three of the five scheduled rounds completed, there would be no technical decision if he called the bout due to an unsafe fighting surface. After a moment’s consideration, he informed cage-side officials that he would give Houston and Dalby until the end of the current round to resolve their business.
FINAL SPRINT
With two and a half minutes separating him from destiny, Dalby fired up the engines on the restart, wailing away with an onslaught of heavy punches and elbows. Victory seemed just one clean shot away, but Houston still wasn’t done. As Dalby struggled to maintain his posture, the Scot forced a last-gasp scramble, latching his opponent’s neck for a trademark anaconda choke. The pair were just too slick with gore. The hold slipped off, and they skidded around like Bambi on the frozen lake. Dalby came out on top again, but Goddard had seen enough.
“Stop! Fight’s over!”
And that was that. Not only was the fighting surface unsafe in terms of the athletes slipping and hurting themselves, were they to fall directly into a submission or heavy blow and lose, it would have been manifestly unfair. With two minutes left in the third, the bout was declared a no-contest due to excessive blood loss, making the cage unsafe, the first finish of its kind in MMA.
