Kevon Felmine

An un­ruly crowd and bleed­ing fin­gers failed to stop 22-year-old O'Neil Odel from dom­i­nat­ing his ri­vals to re­tain his King of the Rock ti­tle at the Na­tion­al Stick­fight­ing Com­pe­ti­tion fi­nal on Tues­day night.Odel was in a ju­bi­lant mood as he ac­cept­ed his $15,000 prize from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at Fun Splash Wa­ter Park, Debe.

Af­ter pre­sent­ing the cheque, Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ma­ter­nal in­stinct kicked in as she in­spect­ed the young Moru­ga na­tive's head for cuts be­fore send­ing him off to par­ty with his friends.De­spite his tri­umph, Odel's Valiant Broth­ers Medil failed to re­tain their Kings of the Gayelle ti­tle which was eas­i­ly won by the Mafek­ing Gayelle.

As the bat­tles be­gan, hun­dreds of fight en­thu­si­asts screamed in ex­cite­ment as the PM, Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Lin­coln Dou­glas, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee chair­man Al­li­son De­mas and her CEO Clarence Moe all looked down from the VIP sec­tion.Odel com­pet­ed like a glad­i­a­tor in three gru­elling rounds. It was the fe­roc­i­ty of his blows with his half-yard-long yel­low-poui bois that pow­ered him to vic­to­ry.

In his first bout, he broke Arou­ca Gayelle's Pe­ter Noel's bois on the first strike and then pur­sued him to beat his op­po­nent like a child.So in­tim­i­dat­ed was Noel that he be­gun to swing his bois from afar to avoid be­ing hit."When you hit­ting, hit wood," was the ad­vice pa­trons shout­ed to NoelOdel de­stroyed four bois on his way to the fi­nal match against Rio Claro's Sel­wyn John, who proved a for­mi­da­ble op­po­nent, with some swift and fan­cy foot­work.

Long­denville's An­tho­ny Byneal fin­ished third when he de­feat­ed Mafek­ing Gayelle's Evan Ralph.Evan's fa­ther, Moses Ralph, who was con­tro­ver­sial­ly dis­qual­i­fied in the fi­nals of last year's King of the Rock com­pe­ti­tion, got some jus­tice when he over­came a piti­ful at­tempt by St Mary's Learie Li­chorich in the fi­nal bout of the Kings of the Gayelle com­pe­ti­tion to cop the $30,000 grand prize.

Li­chorich put on a per­for­mance that an­tag­o­nised the crowd, who shout­ed pro­fan­i­ties as he con­stant­ly din­go­layed around the ring in a bid to avoid con­fronta­tion with Ralph.How­ev­er, Li­chorich's gayelle still re­ceived the $18,000 sec­ond prize.The third prize of $12,000 went to Valiant Broth­ers Medil, whose Ronald Lewis gave the au­di­ence a worth­while match against Arou­ca Gayelle's Ka­reem Austin.

It was a night filled with dra­ma as the Prime Min­is­ter was among the au­di­ence when a woman took the mi­cro­phone and used pro­fan­i­ties as she ex­pressed her dis­gust at the re­sults. She was even­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the Debe Po­lice Post.Evan Ralph es­caped se­ri­ous in­jury when a pa­tron flung a glass bot­tle in­to the ring which nar­row­ly missed his head. This hap­pened al­though there was a strict ban on glass bot­tles at the event and it was even more shame­ful that not a sin­gle broom could be found to clean up the splin­ters.

One man was al­so res­cued from a se­vere beat­ing by jab jabs, when sev­er­al of the char­ac­ters at­tempt­ed to drag him in­to the ring, threat­en­ing to give him a se­vere whip­ping.There was even a brawl be­tween sev­er­al of the jab jabs which al­most turned ug­ly.

Sev­er­al of the fight­ers drew blood in fierce­ly com­pet­ed du­els. In the most se­ri­ous in­ci­dent, St Mary's David Brown was left al­most bazodee when he was struck on the fore­head in a two-strike match. He had to be rushed to the am­bu­lance as blood be­gan to drip from his head.The dan­gers of stick­fight­ing was al­so felt–lit­er­al­ly–by those watch­ing from out­side the ring, as the bois was flung in­to the crowd sev­er­al times. On one oc­ca­sion, a TV cam­era­man had to duck as the bois struck his cam­era.

Luck­i­ly nei­ther he nor his cam­era was dam­aged.While all the dra­ma was tak­ing place, the few po­lice of­fi­cers near the ring had be­mused ex­pres­sions on their faces–but, as the crowd chant­ed, " If you can't take wood, stay home."