BEIRUT (Dispatches) – A young Lebanese mixed martial arts fighter has announced his withdrawal from the 2022 Youth International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF) World Championships in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to avoid facing a Zionist opponent in the international competitions.
Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network reported that Charbel Abou Daher pulled out of the sports event in the Emirati capital city of Abu Dhabi after the draw placed him against Zionist rival Yonatan Mak in a Youth B 48-kilogram weight class contest.
The 2022 Youth IMMAF World Championships kicked off on August 17, and will be wrapped up on August 20.
This comes as earlier this month, Iraqi tennis stars Nasr Mahdi and Mohammad al-Mahdi withdrew from the Bucharest Open Wheelchair Tennis Tournament 2022 in Romania to avoid facing Zionist contestants.
The president of the Iraqi Tennis Federation, Majid al-Ugaili, announced in a statement on August 11 that the draw set them on course for a match against an Israeli pair. The Iraqi seeds then decided to pull out of the event.
The Palestinian Information Center reported on July 31 that Jordanian taekwondo fighter Maysir al-Dahamsheh had avoided a face-off against a Zionist rival at the 2022 World Taekwondo Cadet & Junior Championships in the Bulgarian capital city of Sofia.
The Jordanian taekwondo practitioner failed to earn the bronze medal of the tournament after withdrawing from the competition in protest against normalization of relations of some Arab countries with the Zionist regime.