T&T's mixed mar­tial arts fight­er Damani Adams has ad­vanced to Sat­ur­day's se­nior men's feath­er­weight fi­nal at the In­ter­na­tion­al Mixed Mar­tial Arts Fed­er­a­tion (IM­MAF) Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onship in Mon­ter­rey, Mex­i­co, af­ter de­feat­ing the di­vi­sion favourite, Pe­dro Mu­niz of Brazil, in the quar­ter­fi­nals Fri­day.

Adams faces the USA's An­drew Car­va­jal for the gold medal from 5.36 pm (T&T time) at the Nue­vo Leon Unit­ed Gym­na­si­um.

A 2023 men's feath­er­weight bronze medal­list, Adams earned the op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­prove the val­ue of his medal at this year's com­pe­ti­tion as he de­liv­ered an in­spir­ing per­for­mance to cap­ture one of the biggest wins of the tour­na­ment.

The 21-year-old got the judges' favour with a score of 90-81 af­ter three rounds against Mu­niz, prompt­ing T&T Mixed Mar­tial Arts Fed­er­a­tion (TTM­MAF) pres­i­dent Ja­son Fras­er to de­clare, “This is the fight game, and at the IM­MAF Pan-Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onship, you face very high-lev­el ath­letes, the best of the best in the re­gion. I’m more than proud of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s per­for­mance. Just imag­ine what we could ac­com­plish if we were able to bring our full team, in­clud­ing youth and ju­nior ath­letes.”

​T&T can come away with two gold medals to­day, as su­per heavy­weight fight­er Michael Ser­rette comes up against Mex­i­co's David An­to­nio Mal­don­a­do in the di­vi­sion fi­nal Sat­ur­day night at 7.12 pm. Mal­don­a­do de­feat­ed coun­try­man Gael Cuer­vo Ro­driguez Fri­day by split de­ci­sion, while Ser­rette, 19, is in­to the fi­nal af­ter re­ceiv­ing a bye in­to the gold medal bout in what is his first-ever ap­pear­ance at the Cham­pi­onship.

​Ear­li­er Fri­day, T&T's on­ly oth­er fight­er at the com­pe­ti­tion, Joshua James, fell via first-round sub­mis­sion to Mex­i­co’s Luis Ro­driguez Dominguez in the su­per light­weight semi­fi­nals. De­spite the loss, head coach Keron Bourne praised James’ per­for­mance and com­mit­ment.

As a los­ing semi­fi­nal­ist, James, a pre­vi­ous medal­list at the Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onship in the wel­ter­weight di­vi­sion in 2023, se­cured T&T's first medal of the 2025 Cham­pi­onship, earn­ing a bronze medal, en­sur­ing that all three T&T ath­letes at the com­pe­ti­tion will earn a medal of some kind.

Be­fore this year's Cham­pi­onship, T&T had picked up 10 medals from the in­cep­tion of the event in 2019, in­clud­ing two gold, one sil­ver, and sev­en bronze.