Fighters Only

Issue 090

July 2012

The sport’s strangest stories from around the globe.

MMA + RUGBY = ULTIMATE BALL

LONDON, ENGLAND

Former Cage Rage promoter Dave O’Donnell has turned MMA into a multi-man ball game called Ultimate Ball. The unusual spectacle sees two teams of four men attempt to place an oval ball into the other group’s net on the other side of the cage. Participants are allowed to take down one other and punish with body shots. As some predicted, the game was utter mayhem when it debuted at UCMMA 27 in London in April; T-shirt and boardshort-wearing fighters bettering each other with double-legs and teeps.

The game is similar to the Italy-based outdoor Fight Football League. Played on grass, it employs significantly snazzier uniforms (jerseys and jodhpurs) and requires MMA glove-wearing teams to score goals in a basketball-like fashion while permitted to scrap with the opposing team mid-game. That has been running for at least two years. Which is in turn similar to an annual 54-man Italian game played in Fiorentina called calico fiorentino – another full-contact ball-and-goal sport where only kicking an opponent is disallowed. MMA’s not the only sport with balls…

THAILAND MAKES MMA ILLEGAL

BANGKOK, THAILAND

Only months after Fighters Only made note of the growth of MMA in Thailand (April 2012), the Sport Authority of Thailand (SAT) has declared it illegal. Officials decided mixed martial arts violated the country’s 1999 boxing law, and that events in the country hurt the image of Muay Thai, the national sport. SAT deputy governor Sakol Wannapong said: “Organizing MMA here could mislead the public into believing that Muay Thai is brutal.”

UFC GETS FOUR-YEAR INDIAN TV DEAL

The Ultimate Fighting Championship has inked a four-year broadcasting agreement in India, the second highest populated country on Earth. The deal with Multi-Screen Media means live and archive UFC footage will appear on Sony Six, a brand-new sports channel that shows NBA basketball and Indian Premier League cricket. “I’ve been saying for a few years that India would be next,” stated UFC president Dana White, “and it was just a matter of finding the right partner in the market.”

THREE CANADIAN PROMOTIONS MERGE

A trio of Canada-based promotions have united under one banner: Aggression Fighting Championships. The merger means Aggression MMA, Ax Combat and Armageddon Fighting Championships will now work as one organization and hold around 10 events per year in Western Canada. AFC co-founder Darren Owen said: “This is by far the largest deal in Canadian MMA history, and I’m ecstatic to be a part of it.”