ON Saturday, four fighters from Ōpōtiki will be competing against some of the best mixed martial arts fighters in New Zealand.

Jack Connor, Jesse King, Dylan McPhee, and Genesis Raukawa are the four warriors who will fight in the Shuriken Fight Series 18 in Auckland this weekend.

Connor is a catchweight, King and McPhee are middleweight and Raukawa is fighting in the lightweight division.

The men are members of Whakatāne MMA.

Gym owner Brad Kora is pumped ahead of the event.

“One of our fighters will be fighting a fighter from City Kickboxing, which is Israel Adesanya’s gym, so that’s pretty exciting,” he said.

Kora said the event would showcase the tireless work his fighters had put in.

“It should be a pretty entertaining show; the boys have been kickboxing and in tournaments pretty much non-stop for the past seven months.

“They’ve been competing in everything; Brazilian jiu jitsu, mixed martial arts, and kickboxing.

“This event will be the higher end of the MMA circuit and we’re excited about it, it’ll be full cage up in Auckland,” he explained.

Prior to stepping into the cage, fighters go through fight camps.

“The fighters have been training really hard and they’re had a really solid fight camp; they’ve been running five to 10 kilometres every day.

“During a fight camp, the fighters will train six days a week, which includes running 10 kms a day and usually 10-15 kms on the weekend.

“They’d also do three-to-four kickboxing sessions a week, three to four wrestling and jiu jitsu sessions, and on top of that, strength and conditioning sessions – it’s a lot of hours”

The most recent fight camp has been a successful one.

“These guys all work full-time.

“They’re business owners and tradesmen so, aside from the fight game, they’re hard-working guys.

“They usually put all the work in from 4am to 7am, then I drive from Ōpōtiki to Whakatāne, where their classes kick off at 5pm and go through to 8am, and this happens six-to-seven days a week.

“It’s been a successful camp; we’ve got a lot of good grapplers in our team now and a lot of New Zealand champions.

“The guy are up for it, they’re fit, and they’ll put on a good show,” he said.

Kora said the fighters had managed well with their weight cuts

“The guys are professional. One of the fighters might be 8 kilograms over and we’ll say, ‘you’ve got six weeks,’ and then he’ll start dropping off 5kg a week – nothing too fast – and then do a water load on the weekend off to get rid of that last one to two kilograms.

“So, they’ll water load, sweat it out, and then get under weight.

“We don’t do anything drastic like trying to lose 10kg in a week.

“You get told what kind of fight it is, what the weight is, and we just tell them: ‘You have to lose this much per week,’ and the guys are hard working professionals, so I don’t have to worry about those things,” Kora said.

It’s been a long gruelling journey leading up to the event, but Kora said the fighters were as ready as they could be.

“They’ve been knocking out their opponents in kickboxing in the first rounds, so the power is there.

“They all have good pedigrees in wrestling and grappling as well, so I’ve separated the arts and made them compete in straight wrestling or Brazilian jiu jitsu and then straight Muay Thai and K1 kickboxing as well.

“They get to the fight in its purest form as opposed to MMA, where you get a diluted version of all the arts.”

Kora has been in the game for a long time and this week’s event will be a great showcase of what continues to come out of Whakatāne MMA Club.

“I opened the gym around 20 years ago and we’re very well known for mixed martial arts, jiu jitsu, and grappling in general, so the depth for mixed martial arts has been there for years.

“This is the new generation of young guys coming through, so it’s pretty good,” he said.

The event will be at Eventfinda Stadium with the doors opening at 4pm and the first bout taking place at 5pm.

The main card features top talent from America, Tahiti, Australia, and Korea.

-Simon Herbst