Our Report on Day 1 of the F3 Kombat Championship

F3 Kombat Championship Day 1

Published on May 20, 2012 by The Editor in F3 Championship

Our Report on Day 1 of the F3 Kombat Championship

F3 Kombat Championship is on the face of it a really interesting idea, tonight for instance we have MMA, Muay Thai and Boxing matches, an excellent night out for fans of fighting. And the fights themselves were all entertaining. So what is wrong with this event?

Well it’s all about the promotion or lack of.

The rumors that have been going around are many and all mainly damming. I am not going into them here as I obviously do not know the facts. But the real issues seem to be the amount of money the promoter receives from the government to run the event and the amount of that money that actually filters through to the event.

The most obvious issues that I could see straight away were the almost complete lack of marketing surrounding the event. I live ten minutes from the sports centre that this event is in and I am interested in MMA (obviously) but if I did not actually know some of the people fighting in this event, I would never have known it was happening.

What this event needed was for the month prior to the event some serious marketing around the shopping malls and apartment blocks in Johor to make people aware of the event, some noise on the internet from the various MMA, Muay Thai and Boxing gyms who would be represented, plus of course the promoters themselves and of course the various blogs that support these sports around Malaysia and Singapore.

What this event needs if it is to create any meaningful and lasting benefit for the Malaysian government who is basically funding it, is to get people out to watch the event who are not just members of the various gyms represented and their family and friends. It should be about bringing in members of the public. Until the promoter employs a proper marketing organization to manage this. F3 will just be an event for a few people who are in the know and those who can read the Bahasa Melayu only posters which never turned up until it was too late anyway. Why, they could not have done these posters so that the majority of people who are interested in this event could read it is beyond me. But, as we would see, this really is an event for Bahasa Melayu speakers only. The event itself is not ‘user friendly’ go and watch MMA events all around Asia and the chances are they will be presented in English as well as the local language. As many of the fighters and their fans are not Malaysians, to completely ignore them is plain uncaring and arrogant. Yes, you can fight on our card but no we won’t speak your language. This carries on through the whole event as the announcements went over the heads of many of the crowd.

The DJ was a gem he seemed unwilling to actually make much effort to fill the many breaks in the event with any music and when he did it was simply awful.

There was NO glamour at this event, no dancing-girls and no ring girls, no proper MC and nothing really to make you think you were at an event. Instead we were all just fight fans gathered in a sweltering hot sports hall with not even a refreshment counter, to watch some fights. This won’t attract the casual fan. It’s what happens when a promoter does not seem to know how to market an event beyond a very narrow target demo and does not seem to care that Malaysia comprises of more than one ethnicity.

Simple fact is the Malaysian Fighting Championship which is mainly held in a bar in Kuala Lumpur is a much better place to watch fights, with air conditioning, food and refreshments available and TV monitors showing the action well run and entertaining events. It’s such a shame. Their are better venues in Johor than this sweat box and there must be better people to organize  and promote them.

The final issue with this event is the fact that fighters have been pulling out literally up to the day of the event meaning that even on the day of the fights there is no fight card available. If you don’t pay fighters a reasonable fee to travel to your event and fight, then people will pull out. Smaller events can get fighters for little or no money because the fighters know NOBODY is making any money, the promoter included. Here the promoter is making plenty, mind you if the venue was packed with fans he would have pocketed much more!

As it was I estimate that at most there was 150 assembled to watch the event of which I would suspect at least 70% were directly connected to the fighters and gyms in fact possibly more!

So, rant over let’s look at Day 1 of the fights.

Bout 1:

Was an MMA bout featuring: Antonio “The Brooklyn” Monk Graceffo Vs Hafiz

These two went at it, Graceffo was trying to take Hafiz down but was not finding it easy and so they grappled standing up, eventually Graceffo pulls off the throw and they go to the ground but, before he could really take advantage Hafiz was up again.  Hafiz came at Graceffo with some powerful kicks causing Graceffo to have to burst forward and close the gap and the grappling continued, just before the round ended Hafiz managed to take Graceffo down but the bell went before he could make it pay.

The second round started the same as the first until Graceffo managed to take Hafiz down and with a few well placed and solid hammer fists Hafiz was done, I suspect with a broken nose. He was not happy throwing his gum shield out of the ring and as soon as the result was announced he stormed off blood pouring from his nose.

I spoke to him after the event and he was still angry, he was angry that he had lost and nothing was going to make him feel better. I guess it’s good that it hurt so much for him to lose but I hope he understands everybody loses at sometime in fighting and you just have to get over it and come back stronger. I mean even Bob “Tap” Sapp has been known to lose the odd fight, OK not a good example I admit.

The rest of the event was made up of a mixture of Muay Thai bouts and a couple of amateur boxing events all of which were enjoyable.

However their was NO atmosphere in the crowd, no noise, no applause the place was not generating an excitement which was very sad because the fighters deserved better.

The last Bout of the night was another MMA bout.

E-joy from Mallaca was fighting  Kenny Ng from Penang. 

It was youth against experience and ultimately experience one. Kenny Ng put on a very good show. Taking care of business within one round.

So that was the end of day one, the crowd soon left and I was left to wonder how much better it could have been with a full crowd in a decent venue with air conditioning and refreshments. I mean going back to the promoter, surely a stall selling cold drinks would have been a good idea and you could have lined your pockets with even more money!