US Open, the gate to bringing Jamaica to the world

FROM HUMBLE beginnings of two gold medals in 2006 — Shawn Cummings in heavyweight continuous-sparring and two-man team-fighting won by Keith Edwards and Jason McKay — Jamaica’s combined martial arts team’s 20th anniversary at the 2026 International Sports Karate Association’s United States Open will mark the two most significant decades in local martial arts history.

“I am very pleased with the performance of the squad and the production. I am particularly pleased with the performances of Richard Stone and Nicholas Dusard. It has been 19 years since we have been attending this championship and look forward to our 20th anniversary,” said McKay, founder of the unit, which started as the Busta Fighters in 2006.

Jamaica dominated the Caribbean before taking a leap up the food chain at the 2006 US Open, testing the waters in February with an away victory against the United States.

McKay said his vision of compiling a team of the best fighters from all Jamaican martial arts schools, to compete worldwide, gave rise to fighters who would have gone unnoticed locally and internationally.

“Winnnig 29 medals in 2025, four from the combined team, 30-odd year-olds, most of whom were barely teenagers then, but now winners of world titles at various championships — including Olympian Kenneth Edwards and Nicholas Dussard, an 18-year-old International Taekwondo Federation Pan-Am Championships senior gold medal winner — shows how the US Open has helped to inspire and mould the greatest martial artists to have emerged from Jamaica,” McKay pointed out.

“COVID-19 did a number on us, literally wiping out the McKay Security High School programme, which had given birth to stars such as Ackeem Lawrence, Akino Lindsay, Richard Stone and the supremely talented Oshane Murray. Prior to COVID, we also developed world championship-winning female fighters such as Sheckema Cunningham and Subrina Richards.

“We missed the US Open in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. We tried a small squad in 2022 and 2023, literally missed 2024 because of Hurricane Beryl when the kids, the future, were just returning,” McKay added.

“To have gone through all that, a whole generation lost to the pandemic, attention diverted elsewhere, imagine what the medal count would have been at the weekend,” McKay emphasised, pointing to Jamaica’s record-breaking year of 2019 when the island won 54 medals — 19 gold, 15 silver, and 20 bronze medals — at the world’s biggest martial arts open.

It was at the US Open that the combined team honed its skills and started a run of 53 unbeaten team matches, starting with the Busta Gold Cup and later the Continental World Championships, challenging the world’s top teams in continuous fighting — England out of Europe; New Zealand, representing the Asia-Pacific region; and hosts United States.