Ex-professional skateboarder and Sirius Radio host Jason Ellis is a man known to push himself to the limit, but during his annual ‘Ellismania’ event in 2015 he took that concept to the next level.
Ellis is a combat sports enthusiast and actually has a professional mixed martial arts bout to his name dating back to 2009, so for the 10th edition of ‘Ellismania’ (a once a year event featuring mostly wacky, off-the-wall exhibition fights) he announced that he was going to box for ten rounds lasting one minute each against 10 different opponents.
Not an easy task, particularly when several well-known MMA fighters were being brought in to face him, including Urijah Faber, a highly regarded former WEC champion and leading UFC bantamweight contender.
Faber is widely regarded as one of the sport’s good guys, but when it came time for him to step into the ring against Ellis he appeared to have forgotten three key facts:
1. That jeans and a baseball cap isn’t suitable attire for a boxing bout. 2. That he was only a few months away from a crucial number one contender fight in the UFC with Frankie Edgar. 3. That this was only an exhibition bout, not a fight to the death.
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Ellis was already past the mid-way point of his challenge by this point and appeared to be tiring, but Faber was apparently in no mood to go easy on him, and so what should really just have been a glorified sparring session quickly escalated into a wild slugfest.
With that in mind it’s probably just as well that the ‘shock jock’ had spent time training with former heavyweight boxer Justin Fortune, not to mention the fact that he had over 60lbs in weight together with a substantial height and reach advantage over his opponent.
As it turns out Ellis was able to survive despite eating multiple punches to the head and body, and even landed a few shots of his own despite the hail of artillery fire from Faber.
Afterwards the two embraced with Faber sporting a huge grin, knowing that while the two hadn’t exactly put on an exhibition demonstrating the finer points of the ‘sweet science’, that they’d definitely given the fans their money’s worth.
And with that Ellis trudged back to his corner and sat down heavily on the stool, knowing that he still had several more rounds to go against fresh opponents.
With the fans egging him on he did manage to complete the challenge, though he’s unlikely to be in a hurry to outdo this feat at ‘Ellismania 11’.
