Rio Grappling’s Botes to fight for final time
Local mixed martial-arts fighter, Lourens Botes, will fight in the Extreme Fighting Competition 55 (EFC) for his 10th and final time tonight at Grand West, Cape Town.
Botes will be up against Tricore’s, Gary Joshua, in the bantam-weight class.
“This wasn’t my best year. I have lost two fights. I am positive for tonight’s fight as it will be my last,” Botes said.
Last year it only took a few minutes for Rio Grappling’s Botes to claim his second EFC Africa win of his career with a submission victory over Bill Thusi at EFC 37.
Botes got hard done by in 2014’s EFC Africa 34 national event when he lost a close battle to Oumpie Sebeko – a split decision – at Carnival City in Johannesburg.
The two competitors won the accolade for fight of the night, chosen from the 12 fights that were on the event card. What made this achievement even more outstanding is that they were not even part of the main-card bouts, which have more prestige and popularity.
Joshua is ranked 39th of 85 active South Africa amateur bantamweights.
Profile
Lourens Botes
Record: 3 wins, 6 losses, 0 draw
Age: 37
Height: 1,71m
Strengths: Veteran campaigner, tough and resilient, good all-rounder.
Rio Grappling Club (RGC) Lowveld recently sent a team to compete in “Casca Grossa”, a submission-only grappling event held in Gauteng.
It is considered the premier submission-only grappling event in the country as the rules ensure there can be no win by points, or a draw. Competitors fight to submission only.
This is a very gruelling with competitors often having four or more matches in their division, each usually in excess of six minutes.
Ruche Mienie won gold in her division, girls under 45kg, while her sister Keila took silver in her division, girls under 35kg.
Ethan McFadyen did well in his division and pushed through a hard final match against a tough opponent to win gold in his division.
Nicole Street won gold in the ladies white-belt division and silver in the absolutes, which combines all the ladies brackets to find the winner across all weight divisions.
Andre O’Kelly also took first place in the men’s under-76kg blue belt division, beating the current International Mixed Martial Arts Federation champion, Roedie Roets, in a hard-fought match.
Jarred Goodson won silver in his division, men’s blue belt 100kg.
Craig McFadyen secured silver in his division, men’s purple belt, 100kg.
Tristan Alblas, at 17 years old, deserves special mention as a new blue-belt recipient, holding his own and only just been beaten in the men’s blue-belt division.
