Carden Combat Sports Boxing/MMA card in June
We’re getting a card featuring boxing, kickboxing, MMA, and bare-knuckle fighting has been scheduled for June 6 at Forbes Field in Topeka, Kansas, to resolve the fix of combat sports since the pandemic in the United States.
First reported by Steve Kim of ESPN, the card is going to have a setup that is going to be different from the norm.
“We’re going to have a ring and a cage side-by-side,” said John Carden, the head of Carden Combat Sports, which is staging the event said to ESPN.
Important to note that this Carden is handling the boxing aspect of the card while the MMA is being overseen by Sam Kleinbeck of Never Surrender MMA out of Kansas for the joint venture.
We spoke about the latest on what fights we’ll be getting on our latest edition of the Big Fight Weekend Podcast. Listen below:
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We didn’t have lined up a venue with two rings that on the surface sounds like something I used to watch from World Championship Wrestling from the 1990s with Sting and Ric Flair. This event is for real, however.
The fight card hosted by Carden Combat Sports based out of Missouri won’t be over the area for viewing consumption as it will be on pay-per-view on the service, Fite TV. The report from ESPN also hinted that the venue “could possibly change,” so that isn’t set in stone. The fight time for the card is tentatively scheduled for 6 p.m. CT.
What more than likely is set in stone is the this has the backing and the nod from government officials and the Kansas State Athletic Commission, which is what Carden was waiting on.
“We pretty much had this done toward the end of last week,” said Carden, about waiting on clearances from the Kansas commission to announce this show. “We wanted to make sure we crossed all of our hoops and so forth, before we went forward with it.”
One hoop was the Commission. Another hoop was the medical care as the ringside physician who will be on hand is Dr. Matthew Bohm, a senior member of the state commission. Another possibility is that this opens up a spot for fights as states ease up on restrictions is one to keep an eye on. Carden agrees.
“I’ve reached out to some of the bigger promoters, [and] it’s obviously one of the situations where if Top Rank or somebody else wanted to come in, I could easily set up a venue and leave it for them,” said Carden.
We’ll see if the significant promotions take him up on this offer, in the meantime, this combat extravaganza is taking place the first weekend in June. Just don’t except due to social distancing guidelines any fans as that wasn’t intended for this fight card.
“We can maybe put a limited number [of people] in there, but right now that’s not the plan,” said Carden.
One of the fighters who are slated to be in action on this card is middleweight prospect Cruse Stewart (7-0, 6KOs), who was last in action on the undercard last Showtime card out of Hinkley, Minn, before the pandemic stopped live boxing in the U.S.
Marquis Johns is a unknown humorist and avid boxing fan. His love for the sweet science goes back to when matches were 15 rounds and has been covering fights since closed-circuit pay-per-views. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth is not only a quote by Mike Tyson, it's also a pretty good reminder to keep your guard up.
