Remember that day when our boy made the whole division tap out?
ever had one of those nights where the telly goes on and suddenly it's 3am and your living room's just charles in his pyjamas beating some bloke in a triangle that'd put a python to shame oh man i remember that first armbar against gaethje like it was yesterday. was at the b&b with the lads after a shift, pint halfway gone, match on the pub tv – next thing we know our boy’s got the choke in there and the whole place erupted like we'd just won the fa cup
Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
man, i was literally knee-deep in a bowl of curry when charles just.... 😱 then bam, no nothin else mattered
You don't abandon your own.
ever felt that kind of buzz when the finish is just... too smooth for words you can't even shout because your throat's gone? one of the nights i'll never forget was at the watch party in this tiny upstairs flat in ossington, like ten of us crammed in, boxes of wings everywhere, someone’s toddler asleep on the couch—classic. then charles hits that kimura on that guy from the south african camp, you could hear the entire room exhale at once like we all forgot to breathe for a second. the way it looked, so casual, like he was adjusting his belt after a shopping trip. next thing you know the whole flat's on its feet screaming, toddler wakes up crying, someone spills a beer right onto the keyboard—ah well, we'll see
Been here longer than some have followed.
Think back to when our boy used to walk in there and eight minutes later the ref’s waving a finish like it was no trouble at all. The hallways before the cage smelled of liniment and cheap cologne; the crowd, when they bothered showing up, was half-empty student blocks and the odd drunk in a fight shirt that had seen better days. Charles didn’t so much cut through promotions as flicker past them—one fight a month, one stoppage, then straight back to the warehouse where he stacked pallets until weigh-ins. Every tap-out felt like a Sunday afternoon surprise: you’d get home, put the kettle on, open Twitter, and boom—there’s a thirty-second highlight of him shutting a stocky striker down with a bow-and-arrow who wasn’t even in the same conversation yet.
Now the lights are brighter, the bios are longer, the belts stack like firewood on his mantel. The building hums like a factory with overtime; the local kid wears the same gloves he’s got in his sock drawer since 2016 and walks past a mural every morning that looks like it was painted by the same bloke who did his sixth-form science poster. Same guy, just wrapped in sponsor logos and boardroom handshakes.
The finishes? Still slicker than a chip shop fryer, but the room’s bigger, the crowd’s louder, and half of them are filming on their phones instead of actually screaming. Back then the finish felt like stealing sugar from the bowl; now it’s more like a free pint at last orders—everyone wants a piece, but no one really tastes it the same way.
Numbers > vibes.
woke up one sunday morning after a full week of stacking boxes and emptying the bin at the warehouse to find my phone buzzing like a hornets nest under the pillow – turned out charles had just choked out that bloke from the philippines who talked a big game about "superior martial arts" mid-week after a 5 pint lunch i’d seen him at the offie buying crisps for the entire crew it was *literally* still in my basket 😭🍿 then grabbed my partner by the arm so we could rewatch it in slow mo like it was the latest episode of love island and the dog just stared at us like we’d lost the plot 🤣