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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Stickfighting competition back on

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2720 days ago
20180202
Anderson Macano ,left, and Ricardo Nhinos battle during the opening of the Moruga Stick Fighting Gayelle at the St Mary’s Basketball Court in January.

Anderson Macano ,left, and Ricardo Nhinos battle during the opening of the Moruga Stick Fighting Gayelle at the St Mary’s Basketball Court in January.

RISHI RAGOONATH

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) and stick fight­ers have reached an agree­ment that will see the Na­tion­al Stick Fight­ing Com­pe­ti­tion take place next week, but with­out two of the biggest names in the games.

Valiant Broth­ers O’Neil’ Odel and Rio Claro Gayelle’s Sel­wyn John, who have dom­i­nat­ed the King of the Rock con­test in re­cent years were not sat­is­fied with the in­crease in prize monies from the NCC. The stage was set-up and hun­dreds and fans flood­ed the St Mary’s Bas­ket­ball Court in Moru­ga last Fri­day when the stick fight­ers staged a boy­cott over the prize struc­ture.

Bo­is­men de­mand­ed that the King of the Rock prize be in­creased from $20,000 to $60,000 while the Kings of the Gayelle move from $35,000 to $80,000. This was a re­duc­tion of an ini­tial de­mand of $80,000 and $100,000 for the top prizes in the re­spec­tive com­pe­ti­tions.

Odel told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day that while stick­fight­ers have agreed to go on with the show, many were still dis­grun­tled. His broth­ers, Ronald and Don­ald Lewis, are ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in Wednes­day’s com­pe­ti­tion along with oth­ers, who said they con­ced­ed on­ly to en­sure the art­form lives on.

“It was not ac­cept­able and I told the NCC that I will not be part of the com­pe­ti­tion this year. You can’t be spend­ing $200,00o for in­fra­struc­ture and a stick­man can’t get $60,000. Af­ter a stick­fight­ing com­pe­ti­tion and a stick­man gets wound­ed, you have to fend for your­self. You on­ly get your mon­ey two months af­ter. It’s like spend­ing mil­lions to build a big house but fur­nish it with plas­tic. They have stick fight­ers down as il­lit­er­ates; we can’t read or write. That was a long time with those old­er folks, but the younger folks aren’t the same,” Odel said.

Fol­low­ing sev­er­al dis­cus­sions this week, the NCC raised the Kings of the Gayelle prizes to $40,000, $30,000 and $20,000 from first place to third place re­spec­tive­ly.

The King of the Rock will win $15,000 while the run­ner-up gets $10,000. NCC chair­man Col­in Lu­cas said that since the pre­lim­i­nary com­pe­ti­tion was squashed, they will for­go the semi­fi­nals and hold one com­pe­ti­tion in Clifton Hill, Point Fortin from 7 pm, next Wednes­day.

In ad­di­tion to the prizes, Lu­cas said drum­mers, chantuelles and ring­mas­ters will al­so re­ceive in­creas­es.

“The thing that is of biggest im­por­tance is that I re­alised now that there was nev­er any in­ten­tion to dis­re­gard or dis­re­spect any­one. I think what drove their ac­tions last Fri­day was a wrong feel­ing, but they re­alised that with the sub­se­quent dis­clo­sure of the dis­agree­ment and what was af­ford­able by the NCC, we sort­ed things out. It was a ques­tion of bud­get and our abil­i­ty to pay,” Lu­cas said.


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