ASM: Who are your current champions in your various weight classes?
Howarth: Our current Heavyweight Champion is Norman ‘Chef’ Wessel, we haven’t got a Light Heavyweight Champion yet but we will soon be putting up a Title fight in the next four months, our Middle Weight Champion is Garrett ‘SoldierBoy’ McLellan very popular fighter, and we have got a Welterweight Weight Champion in Adam ‘The Prodigy’ Speechly a very very talented fighter. We have a Lightweight fighter Costa Ioannou he just defeated the previous champion and as for a Featherweight Champion we will be putting up a tourna- ment for that in the next two months
ASM: EFC Africa is not as widely recognized as your US counterpart the UFC how do you intend on closing the gap between the UFC and EFC Africa as far as global brand recognition goes.
Howarth: For us our main focus is in the African Continent and as soon as our broadcast deals are finalized we will start hosting tournaments all over Africa, our next tournament will be Lagos and we will be going to Angola, Namibia and then Egypt. We are quite happy for the global response to Mixed Martial Arts
ASM: Mix Martial Arts is slowly developing quite a following around the world but at one time it was not like that tell me what it was like when things were not as rosy as they seem now for the sports when you started out with EFC Africa…
Howarth: there was obviously the stigma that it was a brute sport and so when it came to corporate sponsorship and TV broadcast rights it took some time but we took the statistics from the UFC and we showed it to these guys that we were approaching and said look guys the sports is booming around the world and they gradually came onboard and so we have been riding a wave of the rise of the sports but there is still the stereotype out there but a small education of our audience will change things gradually
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