10/09/2026
Last weekend a team of students from Maryborough Martial Arts competed at the Australian Amateur MMA Titles.
The post below is part of what our resident MMA Coach Tyler Cotter wrote.
Well… the hostile takeover actually happened.
After 7 long weeks of camp, countless rounds, a few injuries, a few opponent dramas and more stress than I care to admit, MARYBOROUGH MARTIAL ARTS FIGHT TEAM 2.0 went away this weekend with a team of four competitors…
And we came home with:
🥇 TWO NATIONAL CHAMPIONS
🥈 TWO NATIONAL SILVER MEDALLISTS
🔥 FOUR MEDALS FROM FOUR COMPETITORS
Not a bad weekend for little Maryborough Martial Arts.
🥇 KERROD
Anyone who was around Kerrod before his fights knows his biggest battle might have been surviving his own brain 😂 He spent the day nervous, overthinking absolutely everything and asking me enough questions to age me another 10 years.
Then he made the walk and Kerrod disappeared and out came the bad apple (fight name).
Two fights, two dominant unanimous decisions. He wrestled, controlled the cage, got taken down BUT most importantly refused to just be comfortable surviving underneath. He fought his way back to his feet, imposed his own game and got better as the tournament went on.
The second fight was even better than the first. He said he was tired but he found a whole other gear that I don't even think he realises he built over the weeks of pushing himself in training.
National Champion. 🥇 Proud of you mate.
🥇 ANGUS
This one FELT special to me and was maybe the highlight of the weekend.
Angus lost the first round of his best-of-three series by submission. Nothing crazy, got caught in a weird jiu jitsu position he hadn't drilled much and got caught... It happens.
Five minutes later he had to fight the exact same kid again knowing another loss meant his tournament was over. Instead of dropping his head, he listened. We made some adjustments, he trusted them and came back out and won a clear decision.
Then after a short break they had to go one more time. Winner takes the title.
This time Angus absolutely broke him down. Heavy hands, nasty body shots, defended the grappling, made him work against the cage and then started destroying his legs.
Leg kick. Leg kick. Leg kick. 😂
Eventually his opponent couldn't take another one.
LEG KICK TKO. NATIONAL CHAMPION. 🥇🔥
To lose the first one, make adjustments and then beat the same opponent twice immediately afterwards says a lot about this kid in my humble opinion.
🥈 HOLLY
Holly probably had the hardest assignment of anybody this weekend. Nobody entered her actual division, so she stepped up an age AND weight division just so she could compete.
I've genuinely never seen somebody as nervous before making the walk as Holly was. Things didn't go her way. She was overwhelmed at times, she cried, and she discovered very quickly that competition feels completely different to training.
But here's what we can all be, and I hope SHE is proud of:
After that first fight we took her out the back, dried the tears, gave her a drink and a cuddle and asked what she wanted to do.
She wanted to go again. No hesitation.
"Tyler, I am going back out there."
So despite being absolutely terrified, she walked back into that cage a second time. That's courage.
She knows now what competition feels like, she knows what we need to work on, and if she decides she wants to do this again, this experience will be worth more than any easy win ever could have been.
Also technically… NATIONAL SILVER MEDALLIST. 🥈😂
And since nobody actually entered Holly's real division, I personally consider her the undefeated spiritual national champion. Nobody entered Holly's actual age/weight division, therefore nobody demonstrated that they could beat Holly in Holly's division.
UNDEFEATED. UNDISPUTED. The mathematics are irrefutable.
🥈 HEATH
Where do I even start with my fight apprentice 😭😭
Heath had the biggest bracket and had to qualify on Day 1. Five fights on Saturday. Different styles, different problems, different gameplans.
He submitted a pretty crafty Bosnian kid late after being behind early. He wrestled and controlled a sneakily submission-heavy grappler. He lost an incredibly close sudden-death decision against a very good BJJ-based fighter. Then he came back, beat a big athletic wrestler and finished the day by rematching that dangerous Bosnian kid, this time following our adjustment perfectly and dominating him with our homegrown Maryborough™ wrestling.
4–1 on Saturday.
Then Sunday he had to do it ALL OVER again.
He rematched the kid he'd lost in sudden death to the day before. We made an adjustment to his half-guard passing and control gameplan overnight and Heath executed it perfectly, including hitting a blast double literally on the buzzer to seal the fight.
That put him into the national final against an undefeated BJJ blue belt. By this point Heath was walking into his SEVENTH MMA FIGHT IN TWO DAYS.
He fought his arse off, spent a huge portion of the round battling out of a triangle, finally escaped with about 20 seconds remaining and immediately went looking for damage. It wasn't quite enough.
National Silver Medal. 🥈
5 wins, 2 losses across seven fights in two days.
After watching this kid win AN ABSOLUTE WAR at HAMMA two weeks ago and then watching him go through this tournament gauntlet, I couldn't be prouder of how far he's come.
We are going places my bro. ❤️
And there are two members of this team who didn't get to compete this weekend but absolutely deserve to be mentioned.
AAREX 💔
A freak broken foot at training robbed Aarex of his opportunity right at the end of camp. He'd done the work. He was ready.
After seeing how well the things we'd trained translated this weekend, I genuinely believe he would've been right there alongside his teammates.
Sometimes this sport is cruel and you don't even get the opportunity to find out. Heal up mate. Your turn is coming.
SIMON 💔
Simon trained the entire camp only to have his opponent pull out and leave us unable to find him another matchup.
But instead of making the weekend about what he missed out on, he came anyway and for two days he was my right-hand man.
Helping get the kids warmed up, holding pads, settling nerves, watching opponents, talking through adjustments with me, helping organise everyone between fights, being another calm voice in the corner and just doing whatever needed doing.
Cornering isn't just sitting there yelling instructions.
There were moments this weekend where I was trying to think about the next fight, the last fight and three different athletes at once, and having Simon beside me made my job a hell of a lot easier.
You didn't get your fight mate, but you were part of every other one this weekend. Ossss ❤️
While the fighters are the ones who actually have to make that walk, there were a hell of a lot more people behind these four than just the people standing in the corner.
A massive thank you to all the parents, families, teammates and supporters who made the trip all the way from Maryborough to be there with us.
It's a long way to travel to spend an entire weekend sitting around a tournament venue, waiting through brackets, listening to me lose my voice and occasionally watching somebody you care about get punched 😂 But having our own little Maryborough crowd there made a massive difference for ALL of the fighters. It really felt like one big family with all the parents and supporters cheering just as hard for every member of the team.
And to everyone who couldn't make the trip but tuned into the stream from home, sent messages and followed along all weekend, we knew you were watching and supporting us from Maryborough too. The fighters might walk into that cage alone but they certainly didn't feel alone this weekend. ❤️
So that's Maryborough Fight Team 2.0.
🥇 Kerrod — NATIONAL CHAMPION
🥇 Angus — NATIONAL CHAMPION
🥈 Heath — NATIONAL SILVER
🥈 Holly — NATIONAL SILVER
Aarex still waiting for his chance. Simon standing beside me through every minute of it.
Seven weeks ago I told these guys that when they made the walk they wouldn't be doing it alone. They'd have their teammates behind them and a gym with 40 years of history behind that.
This weekend they proved it.
I'm their coach, so naturally I'll take full credit for absolutely everything and accept no responsibility whatsoever for anything that went wrong. 😂
But seriously, watching things we've drilled hundreds of times actually appear when these guys were exhausted, nervous and under pressure was one of the proudest experiences I've had as a coach.
They listened, they trusted me, they trusted each other and when things went wrong they adjusted and went again.
We went down there talking sh_t about a Maryborough hostile takeover.... Then the little team from Maryborough came home with four medals from four competitors and two national champions.
Turns out we weren't joking. 😤
MARYBOROUGH FIGHT TEAM 2.0.
We came. We fought. We took our piece of the pie.
And then we took a whole bunch more on top of it. 🥇🥇🥈🥈🔥
WATCH THIS SPACE.
