WAL­TER AL­IBEY

The first ever Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al In­vi­ta­tion­al Open Com­bat Sports Cham­pi­onship for the shores of T&T from April 28 to 29 at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Cou­va.

T&T's con­tin­gent of fight­ers in the ar­eas of grap­pling, sports sam­bo (self-de­fence with­out weapons), com­bat sam­bo, kick box­ing, wrestling and box­ing, will take on chal­lengers from 27 oth­er coun­tries in­clud­ing Aus­tria, Brazil, Eng­land, Malaysia, Unit­ed States, Rus­sia, Colom­bia, Mex­i­co, Ar­genti­na, Hol­land, Ja­maica, Aru­ba, Cu­ra­cao, An­tigua and Grena­da, among oth­ers, for world su­prema­cy.

Or­ga­niz­er Ja­son Fras­er has con­firmed that well over 200 sup­port­ers and ath­letes will touch down on lo­cal shores for the event, while mil­lions of view­ers in 87 coun­tries world­wide will re­ceive the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see it in the com­fort of their own homes through the cov­er­age of in­ter­na­tion­al sports tele­vi­sion net­works ES­PN, CMC and CBS, as well as live stream­ing from the tour­na­ment venue.

Fras­er said the stage has al­ready been set for lo­cal fight­ers to be ex­posed to the world, for sports tourism and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion to be­come a re­al­i­ty, and for T&T to be seen as an av­enue for in­vest­ment through sports at the event, once fund­ing can be re­ceived.

It will cost or­ga­niz­ers close to $2 mil­lion to put on the event, which Fras­er be­lieves will be par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fi­cial to cor­po­rate cit­i­zens through in­ter­na­tion­al pro­mo­tion and ad­ver­tise­ments.

He is call­ing on cor­po­rate T&T to come on board, say­ing gov­ern­ment alone can­not do it. "The tour­na­ment is be­ing held for the first time and there will be op­por­tu­ni­ties aplen­ty for mileage for cor­po­rate cit­i­zens to ad­ver­tise their prod­ucts to an in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly to pro­vide as­sis­tance to the na­tion's youth and the coun­try as a whole, in this dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion" Fras­er said.

He al­so called on all Na­tion­al Sports Or­gan­i­sa­tions to sup­port him in this ven­ture, not­ing he has al­ready part­ner­ing with the T&T Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, the T&T Wrestling Fed­er­a­tion, Gra­cie Ju­jit­su T&T and the Com­bat Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T among oth­ers.

In ad­di­tion to an ex­pect­ed high qual­i­ty com­pe­ti­tion, there will be at­ten­dances from Herb Dean, an Amer­i­can mixed mar­tial arts ref­er­ee and for­mer fight­er who has had well over 5000 fights in his ca­reer, and many oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al dig­ni­taries in the sport. Mean­while, War­ren Gill, the man con­sid­ered to be the coun­try's most knowl­edge­able in MMA will be part of the of­fi­cials at the event.

The open­ing day of the tour­na­ment will fea­ture pre­lim­i­nary round ac­tion in the var­i­ous cat­e­gories that will be fol­lowed by an open­ing cer­e­mo­ny lat­er that night. This will be fol­lowed by the se­mi-fi­nals and fi­nals lat­er that night (April 28), which ac­cord­ing to Fras­er, may go well in­to the ear­ly morn­ing to en­sure that all is com­plet­ed.

The fi­nal day will com­prise ac­tion in beach wrestling and beach sam­bo at Mara­cas Bay.

<Fras­er on Sam­bo Com­mis­sion>

Ja­son Fras­er, the pres­i­dent of the T&T Sam­bo and Com­bat Sam­bo Fed­er­a­tion was elect­ed to serve on the In­ter­na­tion­al Sam­bo Fed­er­a­tion De­vel­op­ment Com­mis­sion World­wide Flas on Sat­ur­day.

On his face­book page he wrote, "In his Com­ing from a very small coun­try T&T it is the first time any­one from our re­gion had the priv­i­lege to serve on this board. I look for­ward to work­ing along with our Com­mis­sion Chair­man Rober­to Fer­raris of Italy and all oth­er mem­bers as we con­tin­ue to work for the de­vel­op­ment of Sam­bo across the world. I would al­so like to thank the ex­ec­u­tive of the con­fi­dence they con­tin­ue to place in me as Pres­i­dent. I would like to sin­gle out one key per­son for hav­ing us in Sam­bo to­day. Dr. An­drey Moshanov for sup­port­ing T&T and the Caribbean, Dr.Moshanov has placed his con­fi­dence in us six years ago and start­ed the process in build­ing Sam­bo in the Caribbean and Pan Amer­i­can re­gion by ex­ten­sion."

The com­pris­es Robert Fer­raris (chair­per­son), Michal Buchel (Sec­re­tary) and mem­bers Mar­ios An­dreou, Aslam­bek Aslakhanov, Robert Clark, Vi­ach­eslav and Ja­son Fras­er.