Few people love the old ‘bad blood’ storyline in MMA more than we do. Truth be told, if it wasn’t for intense hatred, we’d hardly ever feel any emotions at all. But there’s a point when the blood just gets too bad, and the fight at last weekend’s Action Fight League “Rock n Rumble 2” event between Ariel Gandulla and Mike Bernhard is a prime example of why we need to maintain some semblance of civility in organized combat. As the announcers let us know at the start of the video, these two have a history together. They used to train at the same school, but a dispute over money has since driven a wedge between them, and now they’re trying to hurt each other for real.

You know the fight’s going to be a mess, because it doesn’t even make it through the first thirty seconds before someone takes a shot to the pills. In all fairness, the knee from Bernhard in the clinch seems like it was probably unintentional, or at least it does if you aren’t Gandulla. A few minutes later Gandulla finds himself stuck in side control, and his response is to just go ahead and put his fingers in Bernhard’s eyes. Not a good idea, because Troy Waugh is all over that stuff. He pauses the action, takes a point from Gandulla, and now we’re even. Now we can have ourselves a nice, orderly brawl, right?

If only we could be so lucky. Gandulla hits Bernhard with a shot to groin of his own after the restart, and then things really get ugly. See what we mean after the jump.  Trust us, you’re going to want to see this.

That’s right, after intentionally poking Bernhard in the eye once, then kneeing him in the groin almost immediately after the restart, Gandulla pokes him in the eye a second time.  Not only is this dirty fighting, it’s a baffling inability to learn from experience.  It’s not like he got away with it the first time. 

Just to make things more bizarre, Gandulla responds to the disqualification by trying (and failing) to jump out of the cage, possibly to attack his former trainer and teammates.  After that doesn’t work and he jumps back down, Bernhard cheap shots him with a right hand and they very nearly resume the fight on their own terms right then and there, which nearly incites a total riot at cageside.  Come on people, did we learn nothing from the Renzo Gracie-Eugenio Tadeu fiasco?