The IMMAF is proud to announce the first World Championships in Amateur MMA to be held early July 2014 in Las Vegas, USA, during the Las Vegas Fight week and in conjunction with the UFC Fan Expo.

The International MMA Federation was founded in February 2012 and has since worked diligently to provide a non-profit, democratic foundation for MMA to grow into an internationally recognized sport that is at par with other major sports. As part of the work to develop MMA all the way from the grass-roots and up, the IMMAF is proud to announce the first World Championship in Amateur MMA which will be held in Las Vegas, USA, in the beginning of July 2014.

-“We are very happy to announce this much anticipated and great step forward for the sport of MMA.” says IMMAF President August Wallén. “MMA deserves the same opportunities to develop as all other world sports and MMA athletes deserve the same chances to excel in international competition. We are dedicated in providing the MMA community with the first of many top level World Championships that will meet international quality standards as well as excite MMA practitioners and followers around the world. Las Vegas as the location provides for an excellent setting for athletes and spectators alike.”

The IMMAF World Championships will be held during the Las Vegas Fight Week and the UFC Fan Expo, a much appreciated event which each year attracts thousands of fans to celebrate their passion for MMA through participation in exhibitions, training sessions, special events and competitions. The World Championships are open to national teams consisting of amateur athletes representing a national federation affiliated to the IMMAF. An athlete is eligible to compete if he/she is on the amateur level, is 18 years or older, meet the requirements regarding experience posed by the IMMAF amateur MMA rules and has been fairly selected by a national federation.

The tournament will run for a week with each weight division as a single elimination tournament that depending on the size of the division will run for four or five days before reaching the finals on the Saturday. Each weight division will run one full round of competitions per day which means that all contestants will participate in a maximum of one match per day and a total of four or five matches over the course of the week for those who reach the final. One gold, one silver and two bronze medals will be awarded in each weight division.

The IMMAF has to date received applications from organizations in 75 countries wanting to represent their country as the national federation. Since international standards for national sports federations are high, the IMMAF has a strict process to ensure that requirements such as true non-profit status, democratic structure and fair representation of the national MMA community are met. There are currently 21 IMMAF members and with over 140 pending applications the number is estimated to have reached 40 by the time registrations close for the World Championships.

Visit the World Championship site for more information, www.immaf.org/worldchampionships

The IMMAF is proud to present the first member federation from Oceania – New Zealand. The New Zealand Mixed Martial Arts Federation is the result of a broad collaboration of individuals across the MMA community who have come together to bring the sport forward.

The NZMMAF consists of a group of 15 representatives who have come together from various parts of the New Zealand MMA community to start a federation and bring New Zealand into the IMMAF. This group includes representatives from both the amateur and professional side; athletes, referees, coaches, businessmen – united in a passion for the sport of MMA.

-”I do know that this is definitely a great moment for MMA in New Zealand. The sport’s growing exponentially and the general consensus amongst our members was that we needed to work together to assist that growth.” says NZMMAF Vice President Nyra Phillips. “We want to see MMA be a part of every New Zealander’s life, and when we looked at the IMMAF’s core principles we felt they reflected our vision of where the sport can go, so becoming a member was a natural part of our process.”

Headed up by one of New Zealand’s pioneers in MMA, Mr. Terry Hill, and Ms. Nyra Phillips, long-time fan and catalyst in the MMA community, the NZMMAF has set up clear common goals in addition to complying with IMMAF requirements. The federation has also already been in contact for a while with Sports New Zealand, official government organisation responsible for sport and recreation, and is structuring the federation so that it meets all formal demands.

-“Being in a country that doesn’t have MMA legislation means our job as the sanctioning organization won’t be easy but I’m confident we’ll be successful.  The talent of our members and the guidance of the IMMAF will make sure of that.” says Phillips. “Ultimately, the purpose of the NZMMAF is to protect and serve this sport that we love but one of the biggest effects I see is also my personal favorite – that our athletes will know there are people who care about them and are working hard, not only to get them more opportunities to compete but also to keep them safe.”

The founding incorporated society members of the NZMMAF will act as the board and will formally start accepting members once the federation’s statutes are put in place. Board members in addition to President Hill and Vice President Phillips are Howie Booth, Gary Chalklin, Chris Easley, Api Taia, Margaret Ngapera, Steve Oliver, Ren Sadlier, Ermehn Sakaria, Pina Simpson, Tom Ngapera, Matt Toa, Jason Vorster and Hamish Robertson.

The USA Mixed Martial Arts Federation (UMMAF) was recently approved for full membership, thus updating their status from observation membership which was granted in September of 2012. The IMMAF board is proud of the achievements of the UMMAF and their representatives and welcomes the federation as a full member.

The UMMAF has developed rapidly since their formation and has established among other things a strong network of State Directors, a wider membership base and a working relationship with the Association of Boxing Commissions. Many of the State Directors are well-known profiles in MMA who have pledged their support to the organization as well as assumed the task of coordinating the work of the UMMAF in their state, thus ensuring nation-wide presence.

The UMMAF is organizing amateur MMA competitions in various states across the USA, including competitions that aim to take the top ranking athletes to international competitions where they will represent Team USA.

The UMMAF Board consists of ten Directors and is led by Mr. Frank Babcock who has more than 40 years of experience in martial arts, both as a practitioner and instructor but also as a marketer and broadcaster. Mr. Babcock has among other things developed medical safety and legal standards for training and competition in competitive combative sports that are widely used in the USA, and regularly holds refereeing and judging seminars across the country. Creating a nation-wide benchmark for safety and training in amateur MMA is key to the UMMAF and the federation is currently working on establishing and implementing guidelines.

The UMMAF has been successfully audited by the IMMAF team across a number of areas such as regional representation and democratic structure and is deemed ready to assume full membership.

-“Our United States organization is extremely proud to be recognized as a full member of the IMMAF. Our national and regional directors look forward to supporting the IMMAF seeking recognition by the SportAccord and helping to move the sport closer to Olympic status” says Mr. Frank Babcock, President of the UMMAF.

To learn more about the UMMAF see http://usammakif.org/

For more information on IMMAF membership click here

The IMMAF board has established a committee for anti-doping with the task of enabling WADA compliance within a year’s time, thus ensuring that MMA is at par with other major international sports when it comes to anti-doping policies. Battling performance enhancing substance abuse is crucial not only to ensure fair play but most importantly from a health and safety perspective. Chosen to chair the committee is Mr. Bertrand Amoussou, Vice President of the IMMAF and President of the French MMA Federation. The IMMAF member federations have been asked to nominate candidates for election to the committee and upon completion of that process additional committee members will be presented.

The first order of business for the committee is to investigate implementation for WADA compliance within the member federations and implications on matters such as sanctioning of professional events and compliance with the national guidelines in each individual country. This process is estimated to take six months after which the IMMAF anti-doping policies and procedures will be developed and then sent to WADA for approval.

Responsibilities of the Anti-Doping Committee

• Development and maintenance of IMMAF anti-doping policies and procedures, ensuring compliance with the WADA code
• Education of member federations and assistance in implementation of anti-doping policies and procedures
• Development of IMMAF anti-doping education and information programmes for all stakeholders
• Development and maintenance of the IMMAF doping control program including pre and post competition testing, result based testing, random testing and targeted testing.
• Establishment of criteria for and maintenance of the IMMAF Registered Testing Pool (RTP), identifying those who need provide their whereabouts.
• WADA and National anti-doping organization communication
• Annual report on IMMAF anti-doping activities

For more information on WADA please visit http://www.wada-ama.org/

We are pleased to present Finland as the 20^th country to join the IMMAF family. The Finnish Mixed Martial Arts Federation, Suomen Vapaaotteluliitto ry, was founded in 2005 and have a well-established position in the Finnish MMA Community.

-“We are excited to welcome one of the oldest and most established national MMA federations in the IMMAF so far. Finland has an active MMA community and we look forward to cooperating with them as well as learn from them.” says IMMAF President August Wallén.

The FMMAF is lead by Chairman Petteri Maunu and Vice Chairman Olli Hartikainen. See http://vapaaottelu.fi/ for more information (in Finnish).

The IMMAF has to date received applications from organizations in 75 countries wanting to represent their country as the national federation. Since international standards for national sports federations are high the IMMAF has a strict process to ensure that requirements such as true non-profit status, democratic structure and fair representation of the national MMA community are met. With Finland joining there are currently 20 IMMAF members and with over 140 pending applications the number of members is estimated to have reached 40 by spring 2014, thus meeting SportAccord demands.

A few days ago the International Wrestling Federation, FILA, decided to remove MMA as a sport from their federation, thus relinquishing their claim to govern the sport of MMA worldwide. The IMMAF welcomes this decision as we firmly believe that the fastest growing sport in the world deserves to be represented from within its own community and by its own international federation. MMA is unique and cannot be governed by either one of the numerous sports which each represents a fraction of the techniques that together make MMA a distinct sport. That is why the IMMAF was founded in early 2012 to meet the need for a non-profit, democratic international federation solely dedicated to MMA.

FILA will carry out already announced competitions but then discontinue all activities as well as end cooperation with those MMA organizations affiliated to FILA. This means that organizations that today operate under FILA will no longer have an affiliation. The IMMAF has therefore contacted FILA to offer cooperation in providing a secure transition from FILA to the IMMAF for those organizations that are affected, completely voluntary of course. The IMMAF thus suggest that the IMMAF and FILA together assumes joint responsibility for the preservation of MMA grass-root level organizations in need of support.

-“This was the best decision possible that FILA could make regarding MMA. Now we can start to heal the fragmentation within the MMA community and secure strong and unified international representation for MMA everywhere. We hope FILA takes our offer of cooperation as well as accepts our sincere support in their important task to save one of the oldest sports in the world on the Olympic program. As representatives of MMA we fully support the continued opportunity for wrestlers around the world to compete in the Olympics.” says Mr. August Wallén, IMMAF president.

For information on the IMMAF, our purpose and vision, our member requirements, our application process and the tasks of a national federation under the IMMAF, please see www.immaf.org

The IMMAF is proud to announce the joining of a key European country to our IMMAF member family – Ukraine. Our new member brings all the competence and history in martial arts that is significant with the eastern parts of Europe, as well as a strong relationship to its own government and sports community.

Established in 2002, the All Ukrainian Federation of Free-fight and Single Combat has diligently worked for over a decade in developing MMA (historically referred to in Ukraine as free-fight) and representing the sport all over the country. Registered and acknowledged from the start by the Ministry of Justice, the federation has a long standing cooperation with the government. Today the Federation has what is called a National status assigned by the Ministry of Family, Youth and Sport. In order to align with the IMMAF statutes the Federation has started the process of changing its name from Free-fight and Single Combat to MMA to ensure common terminology all over the world.

-“We are very pleased to get such a knowledgeable and established representative in one of Europe’s largest countries, thus ensuring the inclusion of thousands of practitioners in the global MMA community. In addition, the Ukrainian Federation brings a wealth of experience in representing MMA towards the government that other members can benefit from in their mutual exchange” says August Wallén, IMMAF President.

The Federation is well equipped for the task of representing the MMA community, with 23 regional representatives in the 27 regions of Ukraine and more than 70 member organizations, all of them non-profit and registered in accordance with the requirements of Ukrainian legislation. The Federation has the stated purpose of developing MMA to the highest level, consistent with the requirements of the Olympic movement and the achievements of science in physical education and sport, as well as provide equal rights for all members to practice MMA and take part in competitions, seminars and so forth.

In May 2012 the Belgian MMA Federation (BMMAF) joined the IMMAF. After several years of carrying out many of the tasks of a national federation but without a formal position, the former Belgian Shooto and MMA Federation was given official recognition and the task of representing Belgium in the international community.

When the membership was announced Mr. Ludovic Boulvin, the President of the Belgian MMA Federation, was asked what his vision is for MMA in Belgium:

“Although we’ve already set up a lot of activities over the last years; amateur and advanced competitions, national trainings, technical seminars and so forth, we still have a lot of work to gain a complete recognition from Belgian authorities. At the moment MMA is tolerated in Belgium but we need to get better than that. We’d like to have more interactions with the Sport Ministry and we hope that in the near future, MMA will be integrated as a regular sport in our country. We have been working for so long on our own to promote the sport here in Belgium, and we’re honored to have the quality of our work recognized and see the coming of the IMMAF as a big breath of fresh air that will give a boost to our development. Being a part of an international federation willing to make MMA a popular and structured sport will be a key point in that evolution.”

Since then the federation has focused on unity, gathering MMA practitioners and organizations together, by inviting to information seminars and training sessions for officials. They have also engaged with politicians and decision-makers in the sports community, trying to educate about MMA and the benefits of securing safe governance within the sport itself. One demand posed on the federation from the IMMAF was to officially change the name to BMMAF and make shooto a subdivision of the main federation, thus ensuring focus on MMA in the way that any national federation would focus on one sport. The official registration for the new name went through last week, and with the new name came a new logo as well as a new web site.

“When stepping in to the role as a national federation it is of great importance to ensure a high level of communication” says IMMAF Director of Communications, Erika Mattsson. “A national federation is the representative of a sport in a country and thus it must be easy to find by all those who practice the sport, and it must provide information in an easily accessible and professional format. This is especially important in a sport like MMA that isn’t yet widely understood and accepted by the general public, and where each federation has to work actively to include the MMA community. We push our members to develop their communication and we are happy to see that the BMMAF is active in this regard.”

You can find more information on the BMMAF by visiting www.bmmaf.org, the federation will be adding to the site in the coming weeks.

The IMMAF member federation in the U.S.A., the USAMMAF, has been busy since the summer of 2012 setting up a structure to manage the large country consisting of 50 states. State representatives have been assigned and volunteers with a wide range of skills have been added to the organization. Being the national federation in the only country in the world with a well-established sanctioning system for professional MMA, the USAMMAF’s greatest task lies not within ensuring safe governance for that side but rather in uniting the MMA community, ensuring common practices in everything from training to safety and insurance, and most importantly support the development of amateur MMA.

The USAMMAF has initiated a series of tryouts to qualify amateur fighters for TEAM USA MMA. The tryouts are to be held throughout the U.S.A, starting with a competition this weekend in New York. For this series the USAMMAF has partnered with Fighters Source, an International amateur MMA league. Tryouts were held throughout New York and New Jersey in February and March of 2013. Participating athletes were required to demonstrate conditioning, striking, takedowns and grappling, and their skills were graded by the USAMMAF as well as senior instructors from Fighters Source. Winners from each weight division may earn a trip to compete in the Fighters Source Korea Open taking place in the summer of 2013.

“I am pleased to have our organization sanction this event and that Anthony Medina, CEO of Fighters Source, put his resources together with Renzo Gracie, USAMMAF North Eastern Regional Director” says Frank Babcock, Executive Director and President of the USAMMAF. “They both have such great access to quality amateur athletes, this event is sure to provide great competitors for the Korea Open.”

The competition will be held on March 23^rd at 6:00 pm at the Manhattan Center Hammerstein Ballroom, New York.

For more information visit http://usammakif.org/fighters-source-hosts-kings-of-new-york-to-qualify-amateur-fighters-for-usa-mma-team/

With the latest membership addition the IMMAF solidifies a strong presence in Europe. We are proud to present Commission National de Mixed Martial Arts, the national federation representing MMA in France.

One of the largest countries in Europe, France is also a nation with deep roots in the martial arts and with strong ties to the international sports community. The Commission National de Mixed Martial Arts, CNMMA, has been active as a non-profit organization for the development of MMA since 2009. During that time they have, among other things, educated over 80 MMA teachers, providing them with expertise on how to plan and carry out MMA training with practitioners on all levels in terms of athletics, health, safety and martial arts values.

“In our opinion the way to move forward and raise awareness on MMA in France is to focus on education – about MMA towards the general public as well as within the MMA community to ensure the development of the sport” says CNMMA President and IMMAF board member Mr Bertrand Amoussou. “The CNMMA has worked the past four years on putting an educational structure in place, including a technical system for the safe progression from the grass-roots level and all the way up to the top professional level.”

The task of the CNMMA is a challenging one as there is political opposition to MMA in France and professional MMA is currently not permitted. The CNMMA has already spent much time over the past years promoting the sport and keeping a dialogue with leading policy makers. This dialogue will continue to be one of the key tasks ahead for the CNMMA.

“The CNMMA has made progress in the political arena in the last year and we are confident that the IMMAF membership will encourage the political leaders as well as the French sports community to evaluate and welcome MMA in the near future. I truly believe that MMA will soon play an important role in the martial arts family here in France” says Mr Amoussou.

The CNMMA has filed to change the name of the organization to Commission Française de Mixed Martial Arts, and will release a new web page later in the spring.