WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

A six-mem­ber Mixed Mar­tial Arts team that in­cludes Re­nee For­tune, Che­don Grant, Kay­lon Khan, his broth­er Alex Khan, Joshua Coop­er, and Loren­zo Bourne will car­ry hopes for the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic at the World Youth Cham­pi­onships in Abu Dhabi, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates from Au­gust 2-5.

De­spite be­ing rel­a­tive un­knowns to the pub­lic, the ath­letes have been on the cusp of mas­ter­ing their trade, with 13-year-old For­tune, who has been in the sport for the past five years, plac­ing third at a re­gion­al tour­na­ment in Bar­ba­dos, fight­ing against com­peti­tors who were three years old­er than her.

Khan (Alex), the old­er of the two broth­ers, was named na­tion­al cham­pi­on when the T&T Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion held its Na­tion­al Box­ing Cham­pi­onships last year, while Grant claimed the gold medal in Bar­ba­dos as well. Coach Ker­ry Grant, at a press con­fer­ence at the Mal­oney In­door Sports Com­plex on Tues­day af­ter­noon, joined Ja­son Fras­er, the T&T Mixed Mar­tial Arts, and Sam­bo Fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent, and Roger Eve­lyn, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the fed­er­a­tion, in plead­ing for cor­po­rate T&T to help the young ath­letes get the chance to show­case their tal­ent at the cham­pi­onships.

Fras­er said each ath­lete has to get $36, 000 to cov­er his/her ex­pens­es for the cham­pi­onships, for a to­tal of $216,000 for the six ath­letes.

He told the me­dia al­so, he be­lieves there are medals among the young­sters, as well as po­ten­tial world cham­pi­ons.

“This team has been putting in a lot of work since De­cem­ber last year when we were con­front­ed with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to Abu Dhabi.

“These kids are no or­di­nary kids. They eat, they sleep, they study and they train, and that has been their lives for the last six to sev­en months.”

“We have one who just came from writ­ing the CSEC ex­am and one who wrote the SEA ex­ams, but through it all, they still found the bal­ance to put in the work and the time nec­es­sary to train as elite ath­letes.

“And I know they will do well, they are men­tal­ly ready, they’re phys­i­cal­ly ready, and they are psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly ready and en­thu­si­as­tic to show what they have been prepar­ing for,” Grant said.

“That brings me to this point. We need as­sis­tance from cor­po­rate T&T. I am look­ing at you all dead-cen­tre in the eyes, and I am plead­ing with you to give mixed mar­tial arts a chance, give these youths a chance to go out there and show­case their skills.

“For far too long, com­bat sports have been pushed to the way­side, and for too long, we have been medalling con­sis­tent­ly at high-lev­el in­ter­na­tion­al events.

“We have guys who have brought home gold, sil­ver, and bronze medals con­sis­tent­ly over the years,” Grant ex­plained.

The lo­cal fed­er­a­tion has not been rest­ing on its lau­rels, as a Bar B Que on Ju­ly 8, and a Fund Day on June 18 at the Fun Splash in Debe have been planned to raise monies for the young ath­letes.

At the world youth cham­pi­onships, the rules will be ad­just­ed to pro­tect the young fight­ers.

Among them, the fight­ers will on­ly be re­quired to fight one round, among oth­ers.

“There will be ab­solute­ly no strikes at all to the head, no knees will be al­lowed to the body as well. Kicks, leg kicks from the shoul­der down, and body kicks are al­lowed. Strikes along the body and down to the legs are al­lowed, but there will be no strik­ing to the head.

Once you take your op­po­nent down to the ground, there will be no el­bows and no strik­ing, on­ly grap­pling tech­niques will be al­lowed then,” Grant ex­plained.

Pan Am Course/Ruff N Tuff Re­gion­al League

Mean­while, the world youth cham­pi­onships is one of few de­vel­op­ments tak­ing place in lo­cal MMA, it was re­vealed.

Fras­er who was re­cent­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mixed Mar­tial Arts Fed­er­a­tion (IM­MAF) for a term of four years, an­nounced that the In­ter­na­tion­al Mixed Mar­tial Arts Fed­er­a­tion Fed­er­a­tion will host an IM­MAF Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Caribbean Coach­ing Course on June 27 and 28.

And al­ready, mem­bers from 10 re­gion­al na­tions are ex­pect­ed to at­tend. The course is to be con­duct­ed by lec­tur­er Dr An­drey Moshanov, who is the IM­MAF Head of De­vel­op­ment.

In ad­di­tion, the Ruff N Tuff Caribbean MMA League In­ter­na­tion­al In­vi­ta­tion­al Cham­pi­onships is sched­uled to take place in T&T on Ju­ly 1.

And from this League, a team will be se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent T&T at the IM­MAF Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onships in Colom­bia, from Au­gust 8 to 13.