Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
TV hopeful Ferial joins female fighters
CAPE TOWN’S twice international champion and contender on the reality TV show Infusion is preparing for battle in the Fight Girls South Africa tournament tonight.
Ferial “Felix” Ameeroedien will join 12 female fighters from around the country and Thailand who will show their mettle at a much-anticipated International Full Contact Tournament at Ray’s Muay Thai and Fitness Academy in Ottery.
Fighters have been training for months in preparation for the tournament which organisers tout as “an experience of a lifetime”.
According to the contenders, Muay Thai training is intense and includes shadow boxing, workouts and 10km runs.
Muay Thai is an international sport and cultural martial art from Thailand which was developed several hundred years ago as a form of closecombat that uses the whole body as a weapon.
The event will showcase SA’s top women fighters and some male fighters will do supporting demonstrations.
Fans of the sport are in for a treat as Ameeroedien is said to be the country’s leading female fighter. She has returned to South Africa for the first time in five years to compete in Fight Girls.
Ameeroedien has won the Anglo-Irish flyweight as well as the world flyweight titles in Europe.
She started fighting 16 years ago but because the growth for a professional fighter was so limited in SA she set her sights on Europe where she has “blossomed”.
Ameeroedien said her fans could look forward to an entertaining evening as well as a taste of the real fight- girls’ world.
“I was supposed to be competing in an international bout with a fighter from Thailand but she could not make it. But there is a replacement.”
Fight Girls South Africa Tournament was established in 2006 and has increased spectatorship with tournaments broadcast on television.
Trainer and fighter Rayana Ameeroedien Ferial’s sister said the sport “empowered women”. I
t was a great way to keep fit while interacting.
The sport has grown in popularity among women over the past 15 years.
Rayana Ameeroedien said children as young as 8 and adults as old as 82 had taken an interest.
“My oldest student was an 82- year- old woman who approached me for coaching after she was mugged.
“This sport has become hugely popular in SA and especially Cape Town and Joburg as a result of televised women fighters like this tournament.”
asanda.sokanyile@inl.co.za