MMA is slowly taking hold in Taiwan and the rest of Asia. Here in Taipei there are two major mma/jujitsu schools and there are other schools in Taichung and Kaohsiung. There are currently two promoters of MMA events and just last week we had two events by the two different promoters (whoa...that a lot of twos). Last Friday night, the promoter TMC held an event and there was a pretty good fight that ended in a little controversy.
The fight was between Demetri Telfair who trains at Taiwan BJJ Academy and Andreas Hesselback who trains at Tiger Muay Thai in Thailand.
Here is the first round.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Narouqu...u/1/t8uJBAyLYSE
And the second and third
http://www.youtube.com/user/Narouqu...u/0/HmJrTGI78NM
The controversy is regarding the decision, the excessive use of Vaseline and the lack of a point deduction for hits to the back of the head after four warnings.
Here is the fallout after the match.
http://www.bjj-asia.com/2009/10/tmc...selback-vs.html
My thoughts are that it was an exciting fight, but that for MMA to grow in a healthy fashion, there needs to be an organization to establish standards and help protect the fighters. I think the places where the fighters are training need to step up and create the organization and get the promoters to follow their guidelines. You can't leave it in the hands of the promoters. Let them focus on marketing. Of course, I also realize that all this stuff takes time and isn't easy. Good luck to all concerned and I hope that the current mini-controversy helps MMA events in Taiwan improve.
Man, that was a mess of a fight. Both guys were throwing blows to the back of the head, there were knees and elbows on the ground... might as well let them bite and eye-gouge. Pretty much the same happened at the Luxy event.
ReplyDeleteThe opposite happened too - guys would turtle on the ground thinking that that meant they were "safe" or something. I really don't know what the MMA rule about this is because I'd never seen it happen, but the refs sure didn't know what to do about it, either.
Andreas as been officially declared the winner due to a scoring error
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tmcofficial.com/news.htm
I remember a really bad example of "turtling" when Ken Shamrock fought a rematch against Royce Gracie. They barely moved for the entire thirty-minute fight! MMA has to have stalling rules to prevent things like that from happening.
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