Shine lightweight tournament moves to Oklahoma
Shine Fights’ upcoming eight-man mixed martial arts lightweight grand prix will be taking place in Oklahoma on Friday, rather than in Virginia as had originally been announced. The tournament, which takes place on Friday, was moved become of the way Shine set up the matches for the tourney.
Shine had come up with a fan-chosen series of fights, where fans would determine online through voting which fighters out of the eight-man pool would fight whom. But according the MMAfighting.com, Virginia’s athletic commission refused to grant Shine a license because of that method. Athletic commissions have to approve fights before they happen in order to make sure all match-ups are safe and competitive. This is what forced the move.
Eight-man tournaments are extremely rare today in MMA, having been the format that helped popularise the sport in the early days of organisations such as PRIDE and the UFC. Athletic competitions now often frown on such events because the finalists end up fighting three times in one night, which results in greater risk of injury.
The event is set to feature talented lightweights such as Marcus Aurelio, Drew Fickett and Charles “Krazy Horse” Bennett, with Bennett and Fickett fighting each other in the opening round as one of the fan-invented match-ups.
The last-minute move will no doubt make it difficult for Shine to fill an arena, although with the event happening on pay-per-view, ticket sales might only be a small portion of the expected total revenue. Nevertheless, it continues the promotion’s rocky foray into larger scale events.
After having been considered one of the most promising new MMA promotions, a scheduled card was headlined by a fight between Din Thomas and boxer Ricardo Mayorga. The event had to be scrapped at the last-minute because of a lawsuit from Don King, which left many fighters upset they weren’t getting paid and several hurt the promotion’s reputation. A successful eight-man lightweight tournament would no doubt help that, but so far it seems Shine is having trouble.
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