First and foremost, Phil Nurse is a very nice man, a wonderful fighter and a great trainer and there should be no reason to drag him into a mud slinging contest. For the record, I think it is accurate to say that Phil Nurse's fighters mostly fight on Lou Neglia's events. You will not find them on many other promoters show. I don't know why that is, won't even speculate. It's a question best asked of Phil. He's been invited to put fighters on many shows, since he is a great guy and he has great fighters. In addition to my show, Tommy Bee Bottone has asked him to put on his fighters, so have USKBA promoters Michelle Conhaim (sp?) and Tony Ventura. It MAY, again MAY, I specualate, don't claim to know, may have to do with the fact that USKBA shows, like IKF shows as a matter of fact, require amateurs to wear shin guards and head gear and I have never seen Phil Nurse's fighters fight that way. I suppose since they are now fighting at the IKF national, they are going to give it a try. Correct me if I am wrong Mr Fossum but the IKF national still requires shin pads and head gear for this event?

The reason this was not addressed before was simple, I had decided to ignore Sandy's posts for the reasons cited above. My perogotive

RE the "jumping ship", I was told by a NY based Full Contact trainer who is listed on the IKF site (that limits the list considerably, maybe we should leave it at that) that he was contacted by Steve Fossum directly and told that the IKF national was the premier martial arts event and that it was more important to attend that then the NY Showdown. Based upon this, the trainer wanted assurances that his guys had been matched so that he could in his own words "justify to his fighters not jumping ship" after the IKF had contact them as well. If you want more than that Mr Fossum, I'll gladly share with you the exact WHO... assuming I ever get email service back. I'll be happy to discuss it with you in depth.

But again Steve, I thought we had agreed to not agree and to go our merry ways, your internet friend here is stirring the pot with his comments. Frankly, he can be as upset as he wants, because I am more than ready to debate any issue he wants to bring up