British MMA Helen Harper, had her debut fight for promotion PXC 47 in Guam on Friday, March 13th.
Helen was very much looking forward to working with, and competing for PXC as she had been trying to get onto one of their shows whilst she was still living in Thailand, which was over a year ago, as she now lives back in the UK.
Finally the confirmation had come through and Helen was booked to fight American Cortney Casey on March 13th in Guam.
Unfortunately for Helen she was unable to fly out to Guam (which consists of four flights London >Turkey > Singapore > Manila > Guam) until a few days prior to the event and I have no idea on how many actual hours, being, that it is four flights, through four different time zones!
Helen made it to Guam, (on her own) a few days before her actual fight was due but not when she had initially intended. Due to this, it was felt that the late arrival and timing for the last few pounds needed for her weight cut was affected, which did result in Helen coming in 3 lbs over weight. Cortney wanted Helen to get down to 117 lbs but her body would just not physically go any lower than 118 lbs. Helen had to wait and see if Cortney would accept the fight. Finally Cortney came back and agreed to go ahead with the fight.
On fight day, Helen was feeling great, calm and relaxed, ready for her fight. Then as she is in the cage a whole load of controversy had just opened itself up!
Having spoke with Helen myself, I asked her if she wanted to release an official statement and this is what she had to say.
Helen Harper’s Official Statement:
I don’t know what to say about the fight other than the ref clearly isn’t aware of the rules of the sport of MMA. He made a few bad decisions on the night, one of which happened to be my bout. I received an obviously accidental groin shot in the first round which grounded me. The referee claimed I “wasn’t defending myself” and told me that it wasn’t a groin shot. Believe me, it was as I can still feel it now 24 hours later. As pro rules have it, a fighter is allowed a maximum of 5 minutes to recover from a groin shot, of which I needed about 30 seconds. I was refused this and told that the bout was to be discontinued. Both Cortney and I were completely baffled as to why the fight was stopped at this stage, as we were clearly just getting started. Everyone else at PXC has been absolutely wonderful, and I wouldn’t hesitate to fight for them again, as long as they stop using this clearly incompetent referee. I have spoken to Cortney and her team about a rematch and I am confident it will happen in the future, but until then I’d just like to thank PXC for giving me the opportunity to come and fight in Guam and say sorry to everyone that believed in me for not bring home a better result.
It is my own belief that Helen will be seeking for the decision to be over turned into a No Contest bout, as I’m sure those of us who were watching the ‘Live’ link on Friday Morning, from 12 midday and managed to catch the whole fight and the aftermath of events that happened after will be in total agreement that 1) Helen was struck with an illegal Groin kick (knee to the Groin), 2) Sheer incompetence of the Referee in charge of that fight that day, who did not know what to do; he stopped and waived the fight off in the first instance, then he re-started it briefly, then he waved it off for good! – what signals does that give out as a highly respected person who has fighters lives on the line!
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