Brace CEO Kya Pate (pictured) has announced big changes commencing March 2014 with the promotion today revealing plans to roll out a unique title tournament format in the men’s bantamweight to heavyweight divisions.
In each division, the knockout style tournaments will feature 8 fighters, who will need to fight their way through to an end of year final, with the winners crowned the Brace champions for that particular year.
In a unique twist, for example the 2014 champions returning in 2015 will have to re-enter and fight their way through that year’s tournament if they wish to recapture the respective titles.
The promotion is also looking to continue with smaller pro/am events throughout the year which they say will serve as a feeder for the ongoing title tournaments.
Below is a media release regarding the announcement.
BRACE 2014 ANNOUNCEMENT
BRACE have a lot of changes coming and the first step is to inform you of the formats of our shows.
From 2014 BRACE will be splitting shows into different types of events. BRACE will run the following shows
BRACE – Mens Tournament (BRACE 25, BRACE 26, BRACE 27 etc etc) – March to November.
This is where we will find BRACE champions. This style of show will be limited to 8 fighters for each division in the following weight categories.
- Heavyweight
- Light Heavyweight
- Middleweight
- Welterweight
- Lightweight
- Featherweight
- Bantamweight
This is a knockout system, so if a fighter loses in the first round, they are then knocked out of the tournament.
If a fighter wins they move to the next round. The winner of each tournament (Division) will be crowned the champion of that division for that year. (For example – The Bantamweight fighter to win the division will be crowned the BRACE 2014 Australian Bantamweight Champion).
The difference to this style of tournament to say a Bellator is that the BRACE Champion will only be classed as the Champion for the year they win. So a champion in 2014 returning for the 2015 season will have to try and win again through the tournament. This system is a move towards more of an NRL, AFL type knockout and end of year grand final. All the weight division will run at the same time through out the year and the last show of each year will be a “Grand Final” with ALL title belts being fought for.
What this does is provide certainty for fighters to know when they are fighting, it provides a clear path to gaining a title belt with BRACE and provides the general Australian Sports Fan a similar product that they are used to and can easily follow.
As we have current champions in some divisions, no matter whether they fight on a standard show of ours or in this tournament system their next fight with us would have been a title defence, so they have the following options for 2014 – Either enter the tournament system at the start the year, or gain automatic entry to the grand final event for 2014. Regardless of which option they do, the 2014 Champion will be crowned only for that year, and 2015 a new tournament would start. As BRACE is aiming to grow Australian MMA, all tournament based fighters have to be living within Australia to be eligible.
BRACE CEO Kya Pate had this to say “After 5 years of touring across Australia, in 7 different cities, in 4 different States and hosting hundreds of fights, I realised that the status quo made very little sense.
How does a fighter become a champion? You can have some shows with walk up title fights, other shows have to “sell the story” of who should fight who and fighters have to jostle and position themselves to get opportunities.
For us this move makes perfect sense and I am 100% excited for this the first of many changes that are coming for BRACE”
BRACE – Ascend
This show will be a Pro – Am show, however the emphasis will be based on up and coming fighters that will fight 3 x 3 minute round B Class fights.
BRACE Ascend will be in smaller sized venues in different cities. We need to have a supply of athletes and need to provide next generation of fighter another avenue to gain further experience before fighting pro. This event will be a feeder to our ongoing tournaments.
