MIXED martial arts (MMA) fans are set for a cage fighting extravaganza over the next few days as the BRAVE International Combat Week gets underway tonight with an opening ceremony at the Khalifa Sports City Arena.
The start of the inaugural edition of the MMA Super Cup contest precedes the much-awaited bantamweight World Championship title fight between ‘The Pride of Bahrain’ Hamza Kooheji and Canadian-Irish fighter Brad Katona on Friday and will conclude the following day.
“It’s marvellous to see all this happening,” BRAVE Combat Federation (BRAVE CF) president Mohammed ‘The Hawk’ Shahid told the GDN in an exclusive interview. “Not just the event itself, but what it means to the people of Bahrain, to the kingdom. This is a massive achievement, by any standards.”
The MMA Super Cup is a new amateur tournament, organised by BRAVE CF in association with the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF).
It will see the world’s eight best nations compete for the title and the largest prize money ever paid for an amateur MMA tournament with the winners netting a cool $100,000.
The runners-up will receive $75,000 while the team finishing in third place will take home $50,000.
The organisation of such a major event in the kingdom, Shahid said, was the result of the long-term vision of Supreme Council for Youth and Sport first deputy chairman, General Sports Authority chairman and Bahrain Olympic Committee president Shaikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa.
“Since 2016, when Shaikh Khalid founded BRAVE CF, we have worked to bring his vision, of transforming the sport of mixed martial arts into a truly global phenomenon, to reality,” Shahid, himself a former MMA fighter, said. “He was instrumental in bringing the IMMAF World Championships to Bahrain, from 2017 to 2019, and has, now, been the moving force behind creating the MMA Super Cup.”
The amateur tournament will see Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Ireland, Mexico, Tajikistan and Oceania Champions, joined by two wild-cards: the Balkan Champions and the Arab Champions.
Each team will be comprised of nine fighters, seven men and two women, with one per weight class.
Shahid, who modestly downplayed his own role in overseeing BRAVE CF’s rapid rise and evolution into becoming the most dominant entity on the global MMA stage in just six years, said the entire tournament – and the marquee events to follow in the BRAVE CF57 title fights, including the Kooheji-Katona face-off – would be broadcast live around the world through various media partners.
“Audiences all around the world will be able to see some of the best amateur fighters in the world, as well as the world championship fight between Kooheji and Katona,” he said. “And, at home, in Bahrain, we’ve already witnessed the huge outpouring of interest in the competition so there are going to be thousands of people in attendance every day.”
Most heartening, Shahid said, were the changes in lifestyle that people were making as the sport’s popularity grows in the kingdom.
“More and more people are turning to MMA training, if not actually getting involved in local competitions,” he explained. “That means that more and more people are beginning to lead healthier lifestyles. Also, training for any kind of combat sport aids a person’s self-confidence so mental health, for all the people who are taking up mixed martial arts training, is also being positively affected.”
Hamza Kooheji’s success as the first professional MMA fighter in Bahrain and his successes on the international stage – the popular 29-year-old is currently ranked number one in his division in the Middle East and has an 11-2 record in bantamweight bouts – has also contributed to the sport catching on rapidly amongst children, Shahid added.
“They look up to him and want to emulate him,” he said. “So, recently, we’ve seen 14-year-olds bring back silver, bronze medals from the Youth World Cup. The level of interest now in MMA amongst the young is unprecedented and it’s all because of Hamza.”
And, with Bahrain’s MMA team currently ranked number one in the world, things were on the right track for the sport in the kingdom, Shahid said.
Still only 32, Shahid, himself, took up martial arts at the age of 12 and went off to Thailand a few years later to practise Muay Thay and to fight in local competitions before he switched over to MMA and fought professionally.
Since taking on the responsibility to lead BRAVE CF to its current dominant position in the international MMA context, Shahid has not fought competitively for a few years now, but still remembers what it’s like to enter the cage for a fight.
“It’s a rush,” he laughed. “The urge to do it all over again persists because, if you’ve experienced that feeling, that sense of anticipation as you enter the cage, you do want to go through that again. But I have a different role now, a different responsibility to the sport beyond my own personal interest in it and so my focus is different. It is to ensure that we complete the transition from being an events business to a sports business.”
Judging by the buzz around the BRAVE International Combat Week, it would appear that the transition is more or less complete.
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