Starting the Year with 28 Caged Fights - WCFL 41 Fight Event at Cuban Civic Club in Tampa, FL

On January 17th, 2026, I headed to the Cuban Civic Club in Tampa, Florida to document WCFL 41 (World Class Fight League).

This would be the longest and biggest event I would shoot: 28 fights, zero breaks and the first time I was shooting over the cage instead of through it.

The event was put together by Rafael Garcia, a veteran in the Florida fight scene. He is the owner of WCFL fight promotion and American Top Team Gym in Tampa. And if you've been following the Florida MMA/NHB fight scene then you know who Rafael Garcia is.

For WCFL 41 fight event, I went back to documenting the cage.

In this post I will share how the day unfolded, what happened before and during the fight event.

Let's get into it...

Fight Day: Arriving Early

For this fight event I did not document the weigh-ins the day before. Instead, I jumped right into the fight day.

I always show up to every fight event I document early. At least a couple of hours before it starts.

I love the empty venue before the fight starts. The emptiness of the arena and the calm before the storm.

Prior to the Fights

Prior to the fights and the door openings there is always work to be done.

First up is documenting group shots of the promoter, special guests and sponsors.

I also got to meet 2 commentators who are also fighters: Blake “Bulletproof Troop” and Jessica “Black Widow” Borga.

If you meet any fighters you know they're always nice, friendly and respectful.

Then it's documenting as the fighter's arrive:

As they warm up:

And the rules meeting:

The documentary style photography that I absolutely love.

Doors Open and the Fights Begin

As the doors opened, people began to pour in and the event started.

First up was Ann P performing National Anthem:

Then the fights began!

WCFL 41 fight event featured 28 fights. It is the most amount of fights I've ever shot up to this point.

Shooting Over the Cage for the First Time

For this fight event, I was shooting over the cage for the first time. This allowed for a different perspective and different view of the fights.

Shooting over the cage allowed me to pretty much get every single action shot I wanted without any obstructions.

Now, I do like shots through the cage as they add context and foreground. So I did shoot a few shots through the cage.

But most shots were done over the cage as it allowed me to focus and document all the fight action.

Technical Issue: Banding Effect

During this event I did run into one major issue that I didn't know how to solve.

I was experiencing sporadic darkening, banding effect across many of my images.

Some images were perfectly fine but many had this darkening, shadowing, banding strip effect that would appear horizontally, either at the top, at the bottom or in the middle of shots.

During the time, I did not know what it was or how to fix it. I tried but nothing worked. So I ended up just shooting and finishing the event with many of the shots ruined.

I did, however find out what it was and I fixed it for the next event.

The Chaotic Flow of the Event

The entire event was high pace and non-stop. As soon as one fight ended, the next one was already lined up to start.

For every single fight, I would have to get down from the ladder, get the walk-in shots:

Then go up the ladder and then shoot the entire fight.

And then when the fight was over I would have to get back down, get into the cage, shoot the winner with hand raised and then get the winner and their coach a shot.

I would repeat this for every single fight, for the entire fight event.

The constant movement would translate to energetic fight shots I captured.

And anytime I document an event, I prefer to move around. I don't like standing still. Always putting myself in new positions to take a shot from. I believe this adds to the dynamic energy being captured behind every shot.

Grappling Matches

WCFL 41 also featured many grappling matches and a grappling tournament. So in-between boxing, kickboxing, MMA there would be a grappling match.

Grappling matches are slower pace than everything else. This allowed me to have an active break, slow things down and focus on capturing the human chess matches.

I slowed down my shutter speed to about 1/500th of a second and focused on composition, the position, the transitions and the submissions.

It's during the grappling matches I realized I was leveling up my photography game. I began to see good composition to take pictures of in real-time. I saw the cool shot and I took it right away.

Camera Settings

The camera settings have pretty much remained the same from preiouvs eents.

Shutter Priority Mode
High Shutter Speed: for most of the fights it was at 1/1000s with grappling matches at around 1/500s and winners in the cage hand raised at 1/250s

Also for this fight event, I finally enabled and started using high-speed continuous shooting.

As well as Servo AF (continuous autofocus tracking). This is where Auto-Focus is continuously tracking the subject and keeping it in focus.

Longest Event Yet

This was the longest event I've done so far.

The doors opened at 4pm, the fights started soon after and it didn't end until about midnight.

There were no breaks.

It was constant shooting, one fight after another and almost zero downtime in between each fight.

For the first time, I actually reached using my 4th camera battery. Although I didn't run out of battery juice and finished the event - it did make me purchase 5th battery. I also started charging the first battery as soon as it ran out at the next event.