Saturday 21st March saw the Cowdenbeath karate club enter a multi mixed martial arts tournament held in Methil in "Maxwell's" night club. Fight promoter was bert ford and the format was for various mixed martial's arts fights and a karate challenge match to take place in a boxing ring in front of a capacity crowd.

First up was a karate adult team match between Cowdenbeath and a West of Scotland Select. Some tremendous fights took place with Chris Whyte captaining the Cowdenbeath team to victory. Chris led the team with some fantastic kicking techniques with John Izatt and Scott Evans also winning in some hard fought bouts which delighted the large travelling support from Cowdenbeath. All matches were keenly contested and both teams can be proud of their efforts.

The fact it was fought in a boxing ring in front of a large noisy crowd added to the intense excitement.

Next up was the full contact karate "Sportko" matches between clubs throughout Scotland. Although a points scoring contact karate event, some ground fighting was allowed for a limited period. However when ground fighting is introduced in events the bouts all tend to end up on the deck and that is what the case ended up being with long sustained periods fought with the fighters engaged in ground work which made the events look more like MMA fights.

However all fights were again keenly fought and Cowdenbeath had a number of fighters entered in this event. First up was Shaun Sneddon who again displayed great kicking ability however he was narrowly defeated after a tremendous match. Next up was Grant Robertson who fought with great sprit, as did his opponent, before grant won by submission in the 3rd round after wearing his opponent down with a barrage of hard kicks to the body.

The last fight was the best of the day with Alan Goodwin matched against an impressive Glasgow fighter. The 2 fighters gave their all with the match swinging one way then another before Alan again narrowly lost in a very close bout.

Other fights followed then a final MMA match between Mark Fitzpatrick and a Fife opponent resulted in a draw after 3 hard rounds. Mark fought for the winning Cowdenbeath team in Malta and was in great shape for the match and a credit to his instructor Paul Harrison of Tei Karate.

The Cowdenbeath squad enjoyed the event with Gordon coaching the karate fighters and Neil the contact boys who had been training hard for months for this event. The club however are mainly a sport karate group but wanted to test their ability in a different arena and hopefully earn some respect for karate in a contact environment.

The instructors were pleased with the levels of fitness shown by all the fighters and would like to thank the huge Cowdenbeath support who travelled down for the event. Gordon commented “sometimes as a martial artist you have to step out your safe bubble and really test yourself and I’m proud to say the boys did that today. I commend them for their efforts and endeavour. Well done to all"