{"id":98972,"date":"2026-04-15T10:32:55","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T10:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off"},"modified":"2026-04-15T11:15:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T11:15:51","slug":"9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off","title":{"rendered":"9Th African Mixed Martial Arts Championship Kicks off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Angola. <\/strong><\/span><b>The National Director of Sports, Matos Cardoso, chaired on Tuesday the inauguration ceremony of the 9th African Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Championship at Cidadela pavilion in Luanda.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The competition, the third one organized by Angola running until April 19 is contested by 12 countries in the youth, junior, and senior categories, with the national team holding the continental title, won in 2025, with a total of 87 medals, 37 of which were gold.<\/p>\n<p>The Angolan team is composed of 148 athletes, distributed across the three age groups, in both male and female classes, with the mission of improving on the performance of the previous edition.<\/p>\n<p>The participating teams are Algeria, Cameroon, Co\u0302te d&#8217;Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Mauritius, South Africa, Tunisia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Republic of Congo, in addition to the host country Angola.<\/p>\n<p>The Angolan team has 83 youth competitors, 41 seniors and 24 juniors, with some well-known names in the sport, including world and African champions such as Maria Kitoko (70 kg), Milfa Nicolau (88 kg), Ste\u0301lvia Munhanha (48 kg), Daniela Mandanji (61 kg) and Mayra Lemos (61.2 kg).<\/p>\n<p>Other notable athletes are Cla\u0301udio Fountoura, Lunhinga Joa\u0303o, Elfran Marques and He\u0301lder Manuel.<\/p>\n<p>Angola has already hosted the African MMA Championship in 2023 and 2025, both at the Kilamba Multipurpose Pavilion.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Angola<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Angola. The National Director of Sports, Matos Cardoso, chaired on Tuesday the inauguration ceremony of the 9th African Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Championship at Cidadela pavilion in Luanda. The competition, the third one organized by Angola running until April 19 is contested by 12 countries in the youth, junior, and senior categories, with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":98971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,17],"tags":[329],"class_list":["post-98972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-sport","tag-angola"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>9Th African Mixed Martial Arts Championship Kicks off - Angola<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The National Director of Sports, Matos Cardoso, chaired on Tuesday the inauguration ceremony of the 9th African Mixed ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"9Th African Mixed Martial Arts Championship Kicks off\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The National Director of Sports, Matos Cardoso, chaired on Tuesday the inauguration ceremony of the 9th African Mixed ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Angola\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-04-15T10:32:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-04-15T11:15:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/angola\/sites\/65\/2026\/04\/sm_1776239018.692151.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1620\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1079\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"9Th African Mixed Martial Arts Championship Kicks off\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-04-15T10:32:55+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-04-15T11:15:51+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off\"},\"wordCount\":224,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/angola\/sites\/65\/2026\/04\/sm_1776239018.692151.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Angola\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"sport\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/9th-african-mixed-martial-arts-championship-kicks-off\",\"name\":\"9Th African Mixed Martial Arts Championship Kicks off - 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