March 28, 2024

Coach by day, referee by night

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Eric Karr had to break up a fight Saturday night. Several fights, actually.

He continually moved between fighters bigger than himself, and even knelt over a couple who had been knocked out flat on their back.

Doing so was all by design.

What was once a boyhood interest has developed into a hobby and side job for Prairie City-Monroe’s head cross country coach. Two months ago, Karr traveled to Minnesota, where he passed a two-day course to become a certified Mixed Martial Arts referee.

“It keeps me around a sport that I love, similar to the reason that I’m coaching cross country, honestly,” Karr said. “I love running sports, but I’m at a point where my body doesn’t like to run anymore, my knees are getting old, things like that. I’d rather find exercise other ways, but I still want to be around the sport, so then you get into coaching and enjoy it that way. That’s how I feel with MMA. I get into the refereeing and get to enjoy it that way.”

Karr’s interest in the sport traces back to his youth, although only within the last few years has he actively engaged his interests.

His most recent endeavor within the cage began somewhat by chance.

“What happened was I was promoting with a couple guys and putting on a show and the second referee, the one who stands outside the cage and checks the gloves and the tape and the Vaseline, things like that on the fighters, did not show,” Karr said. “So I said, I’ll jump in there, I’ll be the second ref on the outside. It’s not that big of a deal. Somebody has to do it, and it was fun.

“I did that for two or three shows and I finally said, can I get in there and ref a couple of them? I did and I loved it.”

His increased involvement, as well as importance to the fights, required far more than a physical relocation. Background knowledge and a brief stint as a fighter made the move possible.

The sport first grabbed Karr’s attention when he was much younger. He recalled “watching some of the originals as a kid. We’d go to the local movie store and rent all the VHS ones.”

His interest piqued when he was finishing college, and at a time MMA began gaining mainstream popularity.

A lifetime runner, Karr viewed MMA workouts as an alternative avenue for exercise.

“I’d been a runner my whole life, but I knew that my body was done with running,” he said. “I didn’t want anything to do with physically running at the time (and) needed a break from it, but I wanted to stay in shape, have something competitive. So I started working out with a friend and just kind of went from there.”

Karr spent about two years from 2010 to 2012 training not only physically but also building an understanding of MMA as a sport.

“Fighting was not something I had ever been interested in. Never thrown a punch at anybody or taken a punch. You have to learn all that, and then they start choking you and submissions and they start hyper extending your arms, and you have to learn all that,” he said. “I never did it because I’m some tough guy. I’m honestly the farthest thing from a tough guy there is. I did it because it was exercise and I was learning something competitive.

“I put some dedication into it. It was a daily thing. I put a good two years of training and learning, going to different events and picking up the ins and outs of the business, really. It was never about watching people get beat up to me. It was about a sport.”

Karr competed as a fighter a total of four times in Cedar Rapids and Oskaloosa. His record was 2-2.

“I wouldn’t take back what I did for anything. Getting punched in the face is not fun. I don’t care what any fighter says; you hear them, ‘Oh, I love to get punched in the face.’ No you don’t. You’re making that up,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade the experience for things, such as, if a situation happened in life, I’m not saying I’m going to beat somebody up, save the day, but I’m very confident that I could save myself, defend myself to at least run away.”

His journey as a referee began in 2013 and eventually led him to Brooklyn Center, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, in August of this year. Two eight-hour sessions over the course of a weekend covered rules, terminology and live-fighting situations, and culminated in a test Karr passed to become a certified MMA referee.

Since becoming certified, Karr, who also refs kickboxing events, has had six events on his schedule that run through mid November.

He’s refereed both amateur and professional fights around Iowa, including in Des Moines, Marshalltown, Oskaloosa and Waterloo.

“Part of my job is to keep it (safe) and knowing when to stop a fight,” Karr said. “It’s something you tell the fighters in the meetings when you’re going over the rules, especially with amateurs; I’m not going to let you get hurt for very long before I stop it. With professionals who are getting paid and have been there, done that, that’s the choice they’re making to get paid for it, you let it go a little bit longer.

“Have I made mistakes and missed up in a fight? Yeah, absolutely, it’s going to happen, but all the mistakes I’ve made were considered early stoppages, and I’ll take that. A late stoppage is something I don’t want to ever mess with. I don’t want to ever have somebody injured and then I look back at the video and say, ‘I should’ve stopped that earlier.’ It’s something that I take serious. I want to do it right and keep the sport moving.”

Karr believes continued growth and rising popularity could bring the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) to Iowa within a few years. That, of course, would be a dream.

“Would it be neat to go bigger and better someday? Yeah,” Karr said. “I’m still new enough at it that sticking around the home area, sticking around Iowa and getting the experience for a few years is what I plan to do.

“(If the UFC comes to Iowa,) by then do I have enough experience to get in the cage and ref it? The truth is the UFC can bring their own refs if they want to. What they typically do is ask for a couple of local refs. If I could just somehow get enough experience and do well over the next couple years to just at some form be involved, whether it’s the referee on the outside of the cage checking the fighters or whatever, I mean that would just be unbelievable in my mind. That would be my Super Bowl.”

Contact Sports Writer Ben Schuff at (641) 792-3121 Ext. 6536 or at bschuff@newtondailynews.com.