Day two of Irish Open International has begun. Last night had some crazy fighting in men’s and women’s team sparring and full contact eliminations. In 2013, Hungary’s Team Kiraly won men’s teams and Top Ten Europe won women’s teams.
In 2014, Team All Stars put out a great line up consisting of their usuals of Robbie Lavoie and Jack Felton and adding in the formidable Raymond Daniels AND Trevor Nash! 27 men’s teams and 20 women’s teams entered the contest this year.
Last year, the open weight division came down to Jack Felton of All Stars and Ritchie Veres of Kiraly. In the final seconds of the match, a controversial call gave the fight to Veres. It was a situation that would not be forgotten by the All Stars and would have an effect on the 2014 event.
In the eliminations and run offs for team sparring, Team Paul Mitchell’s Chelsey Nash and Nikki Pelland pulled Shauna Bannon and Evelyn Neyens into the fold for their team. They defeated their first opponents but fell to the hands and feet of Top Ten UK’s Sharon Gill, Natasha Walker and Leasha Morrison. Top Ten UK advanced to the final round to face Team Kiraly’s group led by Henrietta Nagy and Adrienn Kadas.
For the men’s Team Ireland’s Desmond Leonard, Mark McDermott, Robbie McMenamy and Dean Barry fought strong through two opponents but were eliminated from their bracket by a strong Kiraly line-up of Tamas Imre, Ritchie Veres, Laszlo Gombos, Zsolt Moradi and
Krisztián Jároszkievicz. Team Kiraly ended up winning its bracket after
In the other exciting men’s bracket, Team All Stars worked their way through all opponents. Raymond Daniels started a new All Stars trend of downing opponents with shots to the ribs on his opponent from Team Tallagart. The final hurdle to All Stars going to the final fight against Kiraly was the second Kiraly line up led by Alex Veres, Ritchie Veres’ younger brother. The All Stars made short shift of Kiraly 2 with both Daniels and Felton delivering shots that downed their opponents.
For the women, the final fight was between Kiraly and Top Ten UK. The UK women fought hard but there was a break between their eliminations and the final fight. The cool down may have been the deal breaker as the Kiraly women were raring to go. Henrietta Nagy and Leasha Morrison were the final match and Nagy was able to stay ahead to win the match and give the Kiraly women the team sparring win.
For the men, the crowd was in anticipation of the final fight between Kiraly and All Stars. As the team started to warm up, the All Stars noticed that one of the refs for the match was the ref who had centered the 2013 final fight between Felton and Veres. The All Stars immediately protested and demanded the removal of the ref. Under WAKO rules, competitors cannot remove an official, only an official can choose to step out of a match. In this instance, the stand off was on. All Stars would not fight and the official would not step out. Ultimately, it ended in a stand off and Team Kiraly was awarded the men’s team sparring title to give them both the male and female honors.
Despite the controversy, the 2014 Irish Open had great performances and the Saturday and Sunday competition is expected to bring more awesome updates for our viewers.
