MMASA Rains on EWC Parade

No-one could have predicted that last night’s drizzle was to be the precursor to the farcical arrival of MMASA President Bertus Coetzee at the EWC weigh-ins.

After many months and many personal discussions with commitments from the MMASA President that the organization was looking to be more consistent and fair in its dealings with the various promotions, the MMASA President arrived with a bag full of threats for the ever-improving promotion, clearly showing that he was back to his old tricks.

Chief among the threats were revoking sanctioning along with financial fines mostly around the fact that the promotion was apparently not complying with MMASA regulations and that most gyms and fighters were not registered. Regulations that all of a sudden only seem to apply to the EWC promotion and not to others. I say this because the MMASA President made specific mention of the fact that because #EWC7 was the first event of the year, these new regulations needed to be complied with!

Clearly last weekend’s Fightstars event was a figment of all our imaginations OR maybe the rules just do not apply to FightStars because promotion owners Grant Olif and Pietro Cignoli sit on the MMA Executive?

Regarding the issue of gyms and fighters not being registered, at last year’s MMASA AGM it was announced that MyNextMatch would be at all events (See my RuckusMMA blog on tumbler) assisting with the registration of all gyms and fighters – it has been a year since then and to date and to my knowledge, MyNextMatch has failed to show-up at any amateur event – quite possibly because MyNextMatch representative in SA is the son of MMASA Vice President and IMMAF Board Member Raymond Phillips and therefore he will not be held accountable for the commitment made!

The real reasons behind the sudden arrival of the MMASA President at the EWC event – an event he has never attended since EWC’s inception – are unclear but clearly do not require too much speculation! With the new political climate that is sweeping the country, one can only hope that the broom is broad enough to sweep through MMASA because it is clear that both MASA and SASCOC will do nothing about administrators that use sports federations as their own personal fiefdom.