Bryce Mitchell has just announced that he will no longer be competing in a grappling match at the next Pit Submission Series event, while also criticising parent-promotion Karate Combat for editing a photo of him to look ‘feminine’. It’s not something that fighters generally have cause to complain about, and the practice of editing photos of them for event promotion is pretty commonplace among all combat sports promotions. The promotion revealed the poster in question when they announced that they had booked Mitchell against Israeli MMA prospect Ilay Barzilay in a grappling match for Pit Submission Series 12 just a matter of days ago.
That’s the match that Mitchell has now pulled out of, and he actually announced his withdrawal publicly before even notifying the promotion:
“I want to let y’all know I’m pulling out of my grappling match on Friday. This is my first time announcing it, Karate Combat don’t even know yet. So I’m literally announcing it myself before I tell anybody. I don’t want my words to get twisted and I don’t quite trust them with my words.”
He started out by giving a pretty reasonable explanation for his withdrawal, citing an upcoming UFC fight that is currently in the works:
“I’m pulling out of the match and reason being is, the great news is I’ve got a big matchup coming up, a big fight coming up. I don’t know the exact details on the fight but I’m just telling y’all something’s coming up and please be patient with me, okay? I’m being patient too, I wanna fight too and I can’t wait for this next fight. I’m prioritising the fight over a grappling match, it’s not worth it for me knowing I got a fight coming up now to do a grappling match on Friday.”
That’s when Bryce Mitchell started to explain the issue that he had with Karate Combat, and it all centred around the image of him that they used to promote the fight:
“Here’s the thing… Karate Combat, I love y’all but still y’all did me dirty, okay? You posted that CGI photo of me, you did up my ears and you did up my eyebrows and whatever you did to my face. It don’t look like me, okay? I’m just telling you; you took a photo of me and then you modified it, and then you posted it on the roster. The photo looks feminine. I’m not gay and y’all don’t need to be queering me out, okay? Because I don’t like that s**t. So since y’all tried to queer me out, now I’m calling you out on it. You need to be respectful to your fighters and post real photos of them on the roster. Don’t be CGIing us and making us look feminine. Nobody’s gonna like that and I think somebody did that with bad intentions. I’m not stupid. I’m not as stupid as y’all think at least, but I forgive you. All you gotta do is apologise now. Do the right thing Karate Combat; say you’re sorry, take the photo of me down, and we move on.”
Bryce Mitchell shared the video announcing his withdrawal from PSS 12 and calling out Karate Combat for allegedly making him look ‘feminine’ in a match poster in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
It didn’t take long at all for the news to reach Karate Combat president Asim Zaidi, and he immediately addressed the accusation that Bryce Mitchell made against his promotion. He shared the post to his official Instagram account and actually showed both the original and edited version of the photo side-by-side:
