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MMA

02nd Mar 2018

Irish MMA star Chris Fields’ huge opportunity ruined by Storm Emma

You have to feel for him

Ben Kiely

Chris Fields came agonisingly close to making it to Poland.

Around 15,000 fans were expected to be packed into the Atlas Arena in Lodz this weekend where Chris Fields was scheduled to fight Marcin Wojcik.

It wasn’t that long ago when Fields was impressing in his promotional debut at KSW 40 in front of his hometown of Dublin. He threatened his opponent Michal Fijalka with multiple submission attempts, but the extremely durable Polish fighter was able to tough it out to the bitter end.

Fields took a comfortable unanimous decision victory and was subsequently matched up against former KSW light-heavyweight title challenger Wojcik.

 

Cancelled

With that win in Dublin, Fields is riding consecutive victories for the first time since 2012. He was just starting to gather momentum after having multiple fights fall through over the last three years and one more win may have been enough to secure a shot at champion Tomasz Narkun.

However, Storm Emma had other ideas, as Fields explained in a video on Facebook.

“Alright guys, a little bit of a disaster yesterday. Made it to the airport, got to the gate, got on the plane, let us sit there for two hours and then they cancelled the flight.”

We’ve had the worst storm in 35 years in Ireland, so everything has been grounded from yesterday onwards. No flights are going to leave Dublin, no boats, no way of getting out. I’m kind of stuck here on the island and I don’t get to go fight for you guys.”

“I’m pretty disappointed. I wanted to go put on a show for you guys towards getting a title shot, so what I’m hoping now is Marcin, who has a new opponent now, has a quick victory, comes out unscathed, me and him can do it in April and then I can get my shot.”

Germany’s Hatef Moeil has stepped in to replace the Irishman and the contest has been switched to heavyweight.