Earlier this week, we learned that fighters on the “Nemesis: Global Invasion” show received bad checks. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Eliot Marshall and Paul Buentello revealed the gory details to MMA Weekly:
Prior to ever landing on the island, Marshall had four different opponent changes before a fighter was finally found to face him. As he found out once he arrived, his opponent, Chris McNally, wouldn’t get there till the day of the fight, and obviously would miss the weigh-ins. Marshall was then informed that McNally was normally a middleweight so he wouldn’t be giving up a huge amount of weight, but he still needed to weigh-in on the 205-pound limit.
This is where things started to get strange.
“We had a two hour window where we could just show up and weigh in,” Marshall explained. “Like we’re sitting in the lobby and they’re explaining this to us and they’re like ‘the official scale will be here at noon, so come on down any time between noon and two and you guys can weigh in.’”
No face-offs and fighters didn’t even see their opponents at the weigh-ins, although the promoter was there making sure to write everything down. The promoters took care of that because there was no commission overseeing the process and procedures that took place at Nemesis Fighting. Marshall admits his radar was up immediately, but he was there already and wanted to fight.
The problems don’t stop there. I encourage you to check out the full article, which includes the following transgressions:
-No one monitored the locker room, outside of lone official Mario Yamasaki.
-Several fighters rubbed icy hot on themselves before Buentello notified Yamasaki.
-The promotion forgot to hire a timekeeper. Someone ended up using a cell phone to time the rounds.
-The new “timekeeper” texted during bouts.
-No doctor was in attendance.
And then there was an issue with the cage used for the event.The fighters from Puerto Rico apparently had yet another reason to be mad at the promoter for a show that, according to those on the scene, only ended up attracting around 300 fans in total. The organization had contracted a cage from a gym in Puerto Rico to use at the show for the fights. When the arena that held the event realized they weren’t getting paid either, things went downhill fast.
“What really pissed off the Puerto Ricans is they brought their cage over from Puerto Rico. I guess one of the promoters paid him some money to bring it over. So they went to go take it down, tear it down and ship it out, and the Coliseum locked the doors on it, ‘no you can’t have it, we’re keeping it until we have our money.’ So that’s the heat of it, that’s what started all of it,” Buentello said.
How did veterans of the sport find themselves in this situation? Marshall noted:
[T]he promoters were paying nearly what the UFC did for fights, so of course many of the athletes jumped at the chance to compete on the show.
Read the full article at http://mmaweekly.com/the-road-to-nowhere-fighters-detail-disastrous-nemesis-fighting-show-in-the-dominican-republic
