Lee Matthews strikes out with a new martial arts show
Three former world champions will be launching a unique hybrid martial arts show at the Telford International Centre this evening.
The Strike Fight Xtreme (SFX) will see fighters from all martial arts styles, including karate, taekwondo, kung fu and semi-contact styles coverge under full-contact Mixed Martial Arts rules for an exciting night of action.
Telford-born and former kickboxing champion Lee Matthews, ex-Olympic Taekwondo athlete Damon Sansum and 2001 IASKA World Championships winner Andy Cleeves are spearheading the event in Shropshire.
The trio have worked together for a number of years and have been head hunted to put together the show, which Matthews is hopeful will be ground-breaking in the martial arts sphere.
“Absolutely – (it could be ground-breaking),” Matthews said. “This is for all mat sports because mat sports currently have some of the best athletes in the world but there is no way of being a pro fighter unless you go in the Olympic taekwondo team , which you don’t get paid much for.
“Alternatively, they have to transition and go to boxing, MMA or UFC, which is a different lane. It’s a hell of a lot of years of retraining to get to that point.
“What we want to do is create a new pathway for people from mat sports backgrounds to be able to be professional fighters.
“These are all pros and if this works as well as we hopes it will then we’re looking for a 10-fight deal with one of the main broadcasters and then rolling it out so we can hit it at a bigger level.”
Thirty-six fighters, who are all champions in their own discipline, will go head-to-head at the SFX with more than 300 titles between them.
More than 1,000 people are expected to attend the event, while there is scope for a potential television audience of more than one million, with the show being aired live on Triller.
Matthews concluded: “It’s kind of a hybrid MMA but there’s no grappling. It’s for top world-class strikers to fight out in 8oz gloves in a hybrid set of rules which allow all of the different styles to fight with this one set of rules.
“So these are the very best strikers in the world. Grappling is effective but it also stops fighters from expressing themselves so much with kicks because of the risk of getting taken down and then getting grappled, which is a whole different art form.
“People will see some of the best striking they’ve ever seen because we’ve set the stage for them to allow to fully got out for it.”
