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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Sam­bo Fed­er­a­tion in debt af­ter tour­ney

Now...T&T gets Pan Am Sambo

by

2628 days ago
20180509
T&T’S Gershom Griffith, left) takes his opponent Afaro Roberts of Grenada airborne, before pinning him for the win

T&T’S Gershom Griffith, left) takes his opponent Afaro Roberts of Grenada airborne, before pinning him for the win

Walter Alibey

WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Due to the suc­cess­ful stag­ing of the Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al In­vi­ta­tion­al Sam­bo Cham­pi­onships a week ago, the coun­try has earned the op­tion to host the Pan Amer­i­can Sam­bo Cham­pi­onship in Ju­ly next year.

Ja­son Fras­er, pres­i­dent of the lo­cal sam­bo fed­er­a­tion said of­fi­cials of the In­ter­na­tion­al Sam­bo Fed­er­a­tion who were here, were pleased with the event.

How­ev­er, he be­lieves that more of an in­put from gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate T&T has to be made if they are to host an­oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al event.

The Pan Am Games, sched­uled for Ju­ly 19- 25 is set to fea­ture over 400 fight­ers and sup­port­ers from 45 coun­tries, which Fras­er be­lieves will be an ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T, for the sec­ond time in less than a year, to cap­i­tal­ize on sports tourism.

In the wake of the cham­pi­onships last week, the fed­er­a­tion has been reel­ing in debt as the event came off due to cred­it from ho­tels and oth­er sup­pli­ers.

Fras­er is call­ing on Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Sham­fa Cud­joe and cor­po­rate T&T to help his fed­er­a­tion clear mount­ing debts. He did not say how much the bills amount to, but not­ed, as the leader of the fed­er­a­tion, he has been bom­bard­ed by calls for him to set­tle the out­stand­ing bills. These debts are to be set­tled be­fore a na­tion­al team be­gins prepa­ra­tion for the Pan Am in its home coun­try.

On April 28 at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main Cou­va, the coun­try's sport and com­bat sam­bo fight­ers were ex­posed to over five mil­lion view­ers world­wide and gave an im­pres­sive dis­play that led to world recog­ni­tion. This in­clud­ed a gold medal per­for­mance by home­town hero Ger­shom Grif­fith, de­stroy­ing Grena­da's Afaro Roberts by TKO in the 62kg di­vi­sion com­bat sam­bo fi­nal, while Joash Walkins brought the crowd to its feet in an­oth­er hot­ly con­test­ed 52kg fi­nal of the com­bat sam­bo, by beat­ing by Julio Ro­driguez of Brazil by unan­i­mous de­ci­sion.

In box­ing for­mer na­tion­al heavy­weight cham­pi­on Kert­son Man­swell was stopped by Je­re­my Rudolpho in the sec­ond round and Ear­lon Mal­oney sent Bar­ba­di­an Ko­by Brown to the can­vas as ear­ly as the sec­ond round to claim the win.

In ad­di­tion to stag­ing a suc­cess­ful tour­na­ment, Fras­er was high in praise to FLOW Sports, Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion and Con­dor Broad­cast­ing for tak­ing the event through­out the re­gion and all parts of the globe.


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