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Friday
Night Fights Muay Thai’s annual 8-man tournament returns September 28th.
8 of the top 132lb A-Class amateur fighters from across North America will
compete against one another with the last man standing crowned as best
lightweight in North America.
In
2008, FNFMT started their single evening tournament format and with the
exception of 2010, it has been an annual affair since its start. Many of
today’s well known professionals have competed on FNF’s 8 man tournament including:
Ognjen Topic, Liam Tarrant, Troy Sheridan, Marcus Fisher, and Turan Hasanov to name a few.
“There’s something about the tournament that certain kinds of fighters really
get up for” Said Eddie Marini, Event Director for FNFMT, “This is a completely
different animal than a regular fight. An undefeated fighter has never won the
tournament which really underlines just how challenging winning this thing is”
Marini continued.
As
with last year’s tournament, the competitors for this year’s event represent
several different areas throughout North America including the west coast and Canada. Also,
as with last year’s tournament, the line-up of competitors is not released
publicly all at once but rather a different fighter is announced every couple
of days. While the competitors are announced well ahead of the event date, the
drawing for the tournament takes place the night of the event. “The drawing
itself has become an eagerly anticipated tradition with our tournament” says
FNFMT President, Justin Blair “from the start, we wanted to make sure that this
process was completely fair and transparent for both the fans as well as the
competitors. There’s something that just doesn’t seem ‘right’ when I see a
tournament taking place without an open seeding process”. The random drawing
has on several occasions put two top seeds against one another early on in the
tournament: in 2011 Phil LeGrand fought Troy Sheridan in the opening round of
the tournament and in 2009, Tim Amorim & Ognjen Topic also drew one another
for their first bout of the evening. On both occasions, each match included
fighters with undefeated records. Sheridan
won his match with LeGrand but was stopped in the final match by Josh
Fitzsimmons. Topic also had an undefeated record and loss a close decision to
Amorim who went on to fight in a memorable fight against Gabriel Carasco losing
in the finals.
While
most events depend on a heavy contingent of regional fighters to draw a crowd,
fight fans both casual and die-hard have historically supported the annual
tournament. With 3 successful tournaments under their belt, there’s no reason
to expect anything other than a great 2012 tournament.
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