Sawt Falasteen - MMA draws thousands in Nigeria as fight sport gains ground

Eighteen fighters from eight African countries were slugging it out before thousands of cheering mixed martial arts (MMA) fans.

It was the ninth instalment of the African Knockout Championship, an MMA fight league that started off in 2020 as a reality television show in Lagos as the Covid-19 lockdown waned in Nigeria.

The formal championship started in May 2023 and has since hosted fighters from 18 countries, the chief operating officer of African Knockout, Ryan Fayad, told AFP.

While football remains king in the west African country, combat sports such as boxing and wrestling have enjoyed moderate success and produced continental and world champions in the past.

Traditional 'Dambe' boxing has held audiences spellbound for years, especially in the northern region of the country.

But the exploits of Nigerian-born Israel Adesanya and Kamaru Usman, former UFC middleweight and welterweight champions, respectively, are spurring interest in organised mixed martial arts in the African economic powerhouse.

African Knockout is "driven by the fact that Africa doesn't have any platform totally oriented for African talent to showcase themselves to the world and progress to reach those international stages," Fayad, a Lebanese who has lived in Nigeria for 13 years, told AFP.

"The drive behind all this... is to find the next Kamaru Usman and the next Israel Adesanya and promote them all the way to the international stages."

Fayad said Usman is "totally hands-on" with the championship: apart from speaking publicly about the championship in the past, the former UFC champion has also promoted it on social media.

About five thousand fans watched the last edition held in April in person, and several thousands more streamed the fights online.

- 'Not about money' -

"It's not about money," said Jibrin Inuwa Baba, 28, a four-time national kickboxing gold medallist, who is scheduled to fight the winner of Friday’s main event later in August.

The main card of the night is the lightweight faceoff between Jean Do Santos from neighbouring Benin and homeboy Emmanuel Nworie.

"I decided to do this sport because of the love of the sport and love of competition," Baba told AFP.

He said that while MMA is growing "fast in Nigeria," there is still plenty of work to be done.

Eighteen fighters -- two of them female -- are in the octagon on Friday night.

Roughly half of them are Nigerians with fighters from Egypt, Angola, Togo, Burkina Faso and Cameroon also on the card.

Cameroon's Styve Essono, who defeated Nigeria's Damilare Abdulrahim, said his victory "will open up a lot of opportunities for me".

Eighteen-year-old Nigerian Fabian Texas shrugged aside being ill to knock out Egypt's Mahmud Ibrahim in the second-round.

"We are still coming up, and I feel that we are not there yet," Baba, who holds a degree in civil engineering, told AFP at the weigh-in for the fighters on Thursday.

Still, the championship has seen a measure of success since it began, with one of its fighters -- DR Congo's Josias Musasa--making his UFC debut in March.

- Good fights -

The crowd roared as kicks and punches flew.

A valiant performance by Angola's Andre Mukisi, who fought on to victory against Togo's Fred Kudzete, despite being tired, drew one of the biggest rounds of applause.

"The crowd is here for the good fights and not really about home support for Nigerian fighters," Lois Ogunniyi, a 30-year-old media executive who runs Fist2Fist, a small online community of MMA fans, told AFP.

Despite the growing interest and optimism that the championship will eventually be exported to other African countries, Fayad said the lack of infrastructure and the absence of institutional support are impeding the growth of the sport in Nigeria.

He said getting visas for foreign fighters was always cumbersome, some officials are flown in, and for now, the championship relies on rented spaces to stage fights.

"We are hoping that the government will also help us have access to proper infrastructure," Fayad said.

"If we had proper infrastructure, people would go to stadiums to watch. So that's what we are looking for, so it can make our operation easier."

L.AbuTayeh--SF-PST