\u201cHe fought great. Beautiful performance,\u201d Arnett said of Noriega. \u201cWent out against a tough opponent and got a takedown, got reversed, went through adversity, and was still able to fight back and then get a triangle choke, which a triangle choke\u2019s a high-level submission to be able to get. So to watch him be able to show his training in the fight. It was awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
The support of his family, friends and community meant everything to Noriega.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey all showed up for me. They all bought tickets to see my nine minutes, if it went the distance, my nine minutes,\u201d Noriega said. \u201cIt\u2019s just awesome to have people who love you and care for you and support you right behind you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Claiming the title<\/p>\n
With a remix of \u201cMy God is an Awesome God,\u201d playing, Nine Mile Falls\u2019 Nick Beirl made his way to the octagon for the main event, pausing to pray at the gate before pointing to the sky as he jumped around.<\/p>\n
Beirl, whose father died when he was 2 1\/2 years old in the Lewiston area, returned to a place that, by all measure, he could have wished to avoid.<\/p>\n
Instead, it was a site of triumph and visible pride as he won his event via TKO, leaning on his grappling. Tied 1-1 going into Round 3, Beril hit his opponent with a 1, 1-2 series of punches to emphatically claim victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve fought a lot of places in my life, and this place is absolutely insane,\u201d Beirl said. \u201cThis place is everything they said it was going to be. It was insanely loud, insanely frantic, the energy here was just so unbelievably impressive, and it felt like people were rooting for me too, even though it wasn\u2019t my crowd in my arena.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beirl said that his Christian faith has influenced his life as a proud husband and father of four.<\/p>\n
Fighting for them, every punch and bruise is worth it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing able to do something that I love, my kids get to watch me do it,\u201d Beril said. \u201cIt\u2019s a hard, brutal sport, man, but the payoff is so great, because I get to stand up in front of all these people and talk about how much Jesus loves them. I just couldn\u2019t ask for anything more.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe fought great. Beautiful performance,\u201d Arnett said of Noriega. \u201cWent out against a tough opponent and got a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,231142,641,638,44355,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-614421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-clearwater-combat","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-photo-gallery","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}