Home Affairs hold the cards to Igeu Kabesa’s international fight

There’s a general feeling in the mixed martial arts fraternity that Kabesa is ready for the next level having proved himself in the hexagon over the last 12 months.

Kabesa is now waiting to hear back from the department this week on whether all his documents are in order.

"There's a lot of things in the pipeline. I think it's just time and also just bearing with the country we are in. There are a lot of things that are in the backlog so when you apply you put some papers through, sometimes it takes longer than it should but fortunately, we got a date, the 17th of May. So, hopefully, after that, we'll be able to go overseas and do what we need to do there as well. At this current moment, we are keeping ourselves active and we are going to compete on the 8th of June again," he said.

The 30-year-old was also hoping to be in Tunisia representing SA at the African World Championships this month.

But the red tape halted those plans.

"We got the 17th of May which we hope stays the 17th of May. I was supposed to fly down on the 16th but that's probably not going to happen. So, I lose out on that. I was supposed to go represent South Africa in Tunisia at the African Championships but that's not happening. It's fine, we'll see after that. We've got World Championships towards the end of the year so we will be ready for that one," he explained.

The immediate focus now for Kabesa is his title defense against Vince Bembe at EFC 104 at the Performance Institute on 15 June.

"I will be fighting Vince Bembe. It might change, it might not change but in this current moment, we are fighting Vince Bembe. When last year started, it was a bad year but we started training from there. We pulled through, we trained throughout the whole year with no breaks. It was tough on the kids and the family but it was good. Towards the end of the year, we had a couple of fights as well."