“Although we’ve already set up a lot of activities over the last years; amateur and advanced competitions, national trainings, technical seminars and so forth, we still have a lot of work to gain a complete recognition from Belgian authorities. At the moment MMA is tolerated in Belgium but we need to get better than that. We’d like to have more interactions with the Sport Ministry and we hope that in the near future, MMA will be integrated as a regular sport in our country. We have been working for so long on our own to promote the sport here in Belgium, and we’re honored to have the quality of our work recognized and see the coming of the IMMAF as a big breath of fresh air that will give a boost to our development. Being a part of an international federation willing to make MMA a popular and structured sport will be a key point in that evolution.” Since then the federation has focused on unity, gathering MMA practitioners and organizations together, by inviting to information seminars and training sessions for officials. They have also engaged with politicians and decision-makers in the sports community, trying to educate about MMA and the benefits of securing safe governance within the sport itself. One demand posed on the federation from the IMMAF was to officially change the name to BMMAF and make shooto a subdivision of the main federation, thus ensuring focus on MMA in the way that any national federation would focus on one sport. The official registration for the new name went through last week, and with the new name came a new logo as well as a new web site. “When stepping in to the role as a national federation it is of great importance to ensure a high level of communication” says IMMAF Director of Communications, Erika Mattsson. “A national federation is the representative of a sport in a country and thus it must be easy to find by all those who practice the sport, and it must provide information in an easily accessible and professional format. This is especially important in a sport like MMA that isn’t yet widely understood and accepted by the general public, and where each federation has to work actively to include the MMA community. We push our members to develop their communication and we are happy to see that the BMMAF is active in this regard.” You can find more information on the BMMAF by visiting www.bmmaf.org, the federation will be adding to the site in the coming weeks. 
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