This week it was announced that the European Judo Championships , scheduled for April in Glasgow, would not take place in the Scottish city.

This occurred only eight weeks before the event is due to take place following a row over a sponsorship agreement with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

The UFC had announced earlier this month that they would support the Championships with branding, marketing and by promoting it to its audience of mixed martial artists (MMA), but the European Judo Union today claimed the sponsorship did not meet their “values”.

International Judo Federation (IJF) President Marius Vizer had warned last year that a migration of judokas to other sports would represent a “spiritual contamination” of the sport amid fears that top stars were being lured to MMA.

Now the president of the French Judo Federation, Jean-Luc Rouge, who is also General Secretary of the International Judo Federation (IJF) has officially prohibited all Judoka from teaching MMA in France (France together with Norway are one of the rare countries where MMA is still ilegal), with a threat of immediate ban from the federation. from L’Equipe Magazine :

” Anyone (in judo) caught teaching MMA (Mixed martial arts) , will be removed from the French Judo Federation, announced its president, Jean-Luc Rouge on Friday. ” MMA is illegal in France. All those (note: in judo clubs) who teach do not have the right and are liable to be written off. They put the Federation in trouble and if there is serious injury, it will be my fault.”

This comes as no surprise following the comments from the same Jean-Luc Rouge who in an interview with L’Equipe TV said that MMA fighters were stupid :

“These new combat sports (MMA) seem like they come out of a video game. These guys are stupid enough to kill each other in front of everyone in a cage and they are well paid, so they would accept. Sport is not war! We must be able to shake hands and go have a beer together in the end, “he said

This comes a few months after IJF (International Judo Federation) was reported to be preparing a project deemed “confidential”. The French Judo Federation and Associated Disciplines (FFJDA) is the 4th biggest National Sports Federation in France with over 570,000 licensees, and plans to create a new sport, “Mixed Jujitsu Arts.” In other words, MJA. An acronym that makes you think of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), the most popular combat sport of the moment, which allows for ground strikes in addition to boxing techniques, wrestling, judo and grappling. This is obviously not a coincidence.