I'm sick to death of cancellations!

Between one thing and another, of the last 8 opponents I’ve had fixed for fighters from my gym, 7 have dropped out and left my fighter in the lurch. I’m going to tell tales out of school now, why not?

Fighter X is first. He agreed to a fight with one of my guys on my show. Simultaneously, he signed up his clubmate apparently without telling him. That’s another story. So fighter X gets sent all the emails that I usually send before a show, detailing the arrangements, whether or not they want a hotel etc. and he replies to none of them. So a week out or so I send some more mails to him personally, and I get no reponse. I am forced to cancel his fight and replace him with a guy who takes a fight on a weeks notice from Spartan MMA and my fighter has to go up a weight division to fight him.

Fighter Z is next. He took a fight on the same show and had to be replaced at late notice by a fighter from Evolve MMA. They travelled down from Derry to help out. He sent a message saying that he couldn’t compete due to an injury. However later I discover that the actual reason for his pull out was that his gym had been flooded during the wet spell in November and he was unable to train. That, for me, is a valid enough reason to drop out. I don’t want a fighter who hasn’t trained on the show. So why lie?

Ah I’m just pissed off this morning as Amanda’s opponent has had to drop out. She’s broken her foot which is unfortunate and I wish her a speedy recovery. Amanda is gutted of course and I’m gutted for her. I don’t want to suggest that she has pulled dishonestly, I’m just pissed off. Also when people have to pull for genuine reasons, they get tarred with the same brush as the dishonest ones. I don’t want to give that impression of Aisling McLaren who has already agreed to meet Amanda at a later date.

Oh yeah I have a stakler/prankster type. I’ve recieved a couple of abusive calls, mostly messages. This guy calls himself American Dan (no he’s not our Dan). last night I got this text from him:

“F*CK YOU BARRY,i so looking forward to that shit i was gunna kick serious ass including ur homosexual one,but if gay is ur way thats ok, ADVERTISE F*CKFACE bye”

Which is weird. It’s sort of half abusive, then sort of concillatory, and then finishes with a nice bit of business advice and a polite sign off. Then this morning I had a garbled voice message from him, which I could only half hear. I did pick out the words f*ckface, Barry, and newspaper but the rest was unintelligable.

Gonna go do a strength test and then I’m off to the airport to pick up Rafael and Guilherme Mendes!