Pan Blog- The Curious Case Of Mark Commean

Some of my favorite sports stories are the ones that see a guy come out of nowhere to do something amazing. I finally have one of those stories to share of my own now, so I will share it with all of you first.

In the case of my good friend, Mark Commean, “coming out of nowhere” had nothing to do with his skill set, or his ability to accomplish the end-goal, but had everything to do with his journey. Yesterday after fighting four hard matches Mark lost a tough match in the semi-finals to take place third in the Purple Belt middleweight division. When he was done, his face was scratched and bruised, and he had a general feel of exhaustion around him. Mark had achieved a great accomplishment, the bronze medal was no small task, especially the way he won it. Everyone was proud of Mark, and this story could actually end here and it would still be worth telling in detail, but it doesn’t…

After sitting around stagnant for another 6-7 hours after the hard competition Mark made the decision that he would forgo the absolute division (all the top 3 from each weight class competing at the end of the day) Mark and the rest of us left the venue, and he joined several of them at In-and-Out Burger. Mark had some junk food and a chocolate shake, and everyone headed back to the hotel. The next thing we knew, Mark was missing. It was kind of a joke at first, “haha, where’d Mark go?”. Then we were all concerned, “What happened to Mark, he’s been gone forever?”. We actually thought he had been in the bathroom for a  long period of time before we realized he was gone. All of a sudden Marks cousin Joey received a text message from Marks wife that read, “What kind of submission was that?”. The general response was pure confusion, what was she talking about? As it would turn out, Mark ate his burger and chocolate shake and decided he was going to go back to do the absolute. He didn’t want to inconvenience the rest of us by dragging the whole team back, so he didn’t tell anyone, he just left. Mark destroyed his first two opponents, and advanced to the finals. The team raced upstairs and watched Marks last match live from our hotel room. Mark ended up taking the silver medal in the absolute yesterday. It was one of the most incredible things I’ve witnessed, quite honestly. But truly most amazing part is that I don’t think Mark has any idea just how incredible his story is.

Mark Commean beat half a dozen top level competitors yesterday to bring home a bronze in his weight class and a silver in the absolute. He did it with pure willpower, and did it in a way I’m sure very few have ever tried to acheive.  I said yesterday that Marks performance was inspiring, and I wrote that before he surprised us all by going back to compete in the absolute. I think what Mark did was incredible and I just wanted to take the time to share that with you today.

As always, thanks for reading.