Local combat sports community, lawyer call for provincial commission after MMA fighter's death

The local combat sports community is calling on the province to make changes after an MMA fight on Enoch Cree Nation turned fatal last weekend.

They say a provincial commission is needed to make fights safer and that it should come quickly.

After an extensive career in the ring and octagon, Ryan Ford is now a coach at Wolfhouse. He takes his students through months of training before they ever see a serious fight.

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"You play basketball, you play hockey, you play football," Ford said. "You don't play fighting, right?"

The local combat sports community has been rocked by the death of 33-year-old Trokon Dourash.

The amateur fighter had to be helped out of the cage during a charity event on Enoch Cree Nation last weekend.

It was billed as a beginners event offering eight weeks of free training for fighters.

Ford claims there were safety lapses at the event put on by U.K-based Ultra MMA.

"No headgear, no shin pads, you know, smaller gloves," Ford said. "We run amateur fights and you don't get to do that."

Alberta is the only jurisdiction in Canada or the United States to have municipalities control commissions that sanction combat sports.

"The rules should be identical provincewide," said Erik Magraken, an injury lawyer and combat sports judge. "What's legal? What isn't legal? What are the medical standards you need to fight? Who's qualified to fight? What kind of quality of officiating do we have?"

He says Alberta should follow recent recommendations to form a provincial combat sports commission, advice from an inquiry into the 2017 death of boxer Tim Hague.

A spokesperson for the ministry of tourism and sport told CTV News Edmonton it is reviewing those recommendations and will respond in the coming months.

Magraken says it only took the B.C. government six months to change the rules for combat sports after a beginner kickboxer wound up in a vegetative state from a fight.

"British Columbia acted very quickly in the face of tragedy," he said. "Alberta now has two strikes and I really hope they don't wait for a third strike because no good's going to come if they keep the status quo in place."

RCMP are investigating Dourash's death.