​Team Fighting Championship Is Too Brutal for the United States—for Now

Imagine a team combat sport where ten men climb into a ring and beat the living shit out of each other for as long as it takes until only one of them is left standing. The fighters consist of two teams of five and can use virtually any manner of martial art to dispatch their opponents. A five-on-one beatdown—complete with face stomps and soccer kicks to the head—is a somewhat inevitable outcome of each match.

To the mild-mannered sports enthusiast with a taste for boxing or the occasional foray into MMA, this all-out brawl might seem cruel and unnecessary—a spectacle devoid of sportsmanship, like a game show hosted by Caligula or a series of poor decisions made by violent young men with high testosterone levels and access to a GoPro camera.

In reality, it's an organization based in Latvia called the Team Fighting Championship, or TFC for short. While the fights are a bit too raw for US soil right now, there is already a US team competing in the sport. The Americans who participate in this international crucible of hand-to-hand combat aren't just out to crack skulls in the Baltics—they consider themselves to be pioneers of a new fighting sport, destined to turn heads.

"First, everybody did boxing, then kickboxing got popular, then MMA became the next thing," Jody Poff, head coach of the TFC'S USA Team says. "As a sport, we're going to go through the same growing pains as MMA and the UFC went through. Yeah, we're a little crazy, but we're pro athletes and we want to explore what's next. The next level."

So what does the next level look like? For starters, TFC isn't an all-out warzone. There are rules. In fact, TFC is governed by similar rules created by Japan's legendary mixed martial arts PRIDE Fighting Championship. PRIDE Fighting Championship was the UFC before UFC was a household name to every wanna-be Karate Kid-Bloodsport-Bruce Lee dilettante, before everyone who owned a pair of grappling gloves and a six-month renewable gym membership started to tell their friends that they were "cage fighters." PRIDE fighters endured a harrowing ten-minute first round, and rules that included face stomps and knees to the head of a downed opponent.

What makes TFC's rules different than PRIDE's? Pretty much nothing. Aside from the five referees and the whole Warriors vibe, TFC is almost indistinguishable from PRIDE. The collective weight of each team's five members must be 550 kilos, or around 1,212 pounds. There is no time limit, and last man standing is the singular condition of victory. Teams are permitted to bring up to ten fighters with them, which results in first string and second string positions, as well as an ample supply of substitutes should someone get injured. The battle is held in an empty, audience-free 30,000-square foot arena, inside a 40-by-40 ring. So far, there are teams hailing from Brazil, Poland, Russia, Latvia, and the US, with more TFC teams continuing to form around the globe, including Egypt, Argentina, and Canada.

"It can get ugly fast once guys start dropping," Poff says. "But there are five referees in there with you, and they are watching everything. So in a way, by the time it gets mismatched, it's pretty safe. In a normal fight, there's only one ref."

Like all team sports, a game plan is the key to winning a TFC match. Although the notion of a five-on-five throwdown may appear to rely on animalistic bloodlust and fighter's instincts, there's a method to the madness.

"There is definitely a strategy to it," TFC Team USA fighter Sean Barnett says. "When we are in there, we each have a specific job to do. We all know what has to be done. If you don't do it, you let your team down."

Barnett's success in TFC is a testament to the reality of technique and strategy. He is one of the lightest fighters in the entire organization, weighing in at a modest 125 pounds—but he is, by his coach's account, the US team's MVP. As a submission specialist, Barnett has sent many a man into involuntary naptime. He's also really great at breaking people's arms, and the arms are usually attached to guys who weigh in at well over 200 pounds. In fact, Poff's description of the TFC Poland team sounded like something out of a dark eastern European fairytale, invoking visions of enormous men with fists the size of lunchboxes and real-life ogres who eat children. But the US team's technique and skill made them competitive against such a show of brute force.

"My guys are technical. Some of these other teams are brawlers," Poff says. "If we go in there and brawl with them, we will lose."

About that brawling part—in laymen's terms, TFC truly is MMA in a team-based format. Guys stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their teammates and when the bell rings, they pair off and scrap one-on-one until something goes terribly wrong. When someone taps or blacks out, the man who finished him is free to look around and help out anyone on his team. By help out, I mean the first guy to finish his man can then run over and kick a member of the opposing team in the head while said opponent is struggling to finish the fighter he initially engaged with. Helping out a teammate could also look like sneaking up from behind to choke another man unconscious and whittle down that five-on-four ratio a bit more. At the end of each TFC match is one poor unfortunate soul doing battle, sometimes against five others.

"The fights happen and they are over quickly," Barnett says. "It's not a street fight. There is strategy. But once one guy goes down, everything changes fast."

Here in the US of A, we tend to enjoy entertainment that's a bit extreme. That's why the Discovery Channel airs a show called Eaten Alive where you can watch a man enter the body of a giant anaconda in a snake-proof suit. It's the reason Joe Rogan made a name for himself on a show where contestants ate live cockroaches or dangled from helicopters. But it seems like we draw the line when it comes to our sports.

In an era where football is under fire for being potentially dangerous and the state of New York has yet to lift its ban on mixed martial arts, the arrival of TFC is probably not something the American public is going to welcome with open arms. At least not yet—I'm sure there will be some TV producer or overzealous American fight promoter in a few years thinking to himself, How about we get old school with it and release pissed-off wild animals into the ring for the fighters to contend with? Or, What if we find a way to flood the arena and give everyone snorkels and harpoons?

The sheer spectacle of TFC puts it into a gray area between entertainment and competition, and TFC's American participants seem to know that their sport is not quite ready to be received by their countrymen.

"No one is stepping on US soil with [TFC] because it scares people," Poff says. "And rightfully so."

That makes sense, given that TFC has been described by James Jefferson, president of Global Proving Grounds, the company that partially owns TFC, as, "more or less a barroom brawl without the bottles" in an interview with MMAFighting.org.

But whether America is willing to accept TFC right now or not, there's no denying that the intense combat sport's momentum will continue to grow if it isn't shut down because of mismanagement or severe public outcry. Ultimately, TFC will keep going as long as there are fighters ready to jump in the ring and duke it out until there's only one man left standing. Judging from the history of humans and fighting, that isn't going to change anytime soon.

"I'm a competitor," Barnett says. "I'm always looking for that next level." Right now, that level is TFC.