Cage Wolves MMA must cease operations – martial arts scene loses place of prevention work
With the closure of the Cage Wolves Mixed Martial Arts gym in Vienna's Floridsdorf district, the martial arts scene in Vienna has lost an important and progressive player. On December 4, 2024, a large-scale police raid took place in several Viennese gyms. This included the home of Cage Wolves owner and head coach Georg Schober. The large police contingent, with a helicopter, dog unit and around 40 officers, not only traumatized the children training there, but also disturbed the owner. After the operation, which was also accompanied by municipal officials from the City of Vienna, a mistake in the lease was finally found. Georg Schober would not have been able to financially rectify this administrative error and therefore decided to discontinue his club activities at the end of February.
Gym as an anchor point for young people
The closure of the gym has far-reaching consequences – not only for the operator – but especially for the young people who train there. While Schober was an anchor point for many in a difficult phase of their lives and gave them structure inside and outside of their daily training, the fighters moved on and now mostly train in surrounding gyms in Floridsdorf and Donaustadt. Schober fears that they could now become more deeply immersed in extremist structures in martial arts.
This is an argument that Célina Brauneder can also understand. She is a social worker at Streetwork Wien, a project of the “Rettet das Kind” association, and has been training with the Cage Wolves for two years. She trained there herself as part of her work and was available as a social worker for the young people. She also appreciates Georg Schober's open approach and believes that social work in martial arts gyms can help prevent extremism. There are plenty of ideas for further social work approaches in martial arts (see interview here) – it remains to be seen whether these will also be supported and financially equipped by politicians. The district of Floridsdorf seems willing to talk and recognizes the added value of the work (see interview here). From this point of view, the raid on the Cage Wolves and the resulting closure of their activities seems counterproductive for prevention work in the district and the city.
Prevention work: a lack of structures in martial arts
The fairplay prevention team takes the same line. The project supports progressive forces in martial arts within the scope of its possibilities, with the aim of promoting a diverse and open martial arts landscape in Austria. Georg Schober was one of the first gym operators to welcome this approach and engage in cooperation. The Cage Wolves, for example, participated in the “Diversity in Martial Arts” conference and in campaigns such as “90‘’ for fair play” by offering a training session. Thanks to his openness to social work in sports, Schober enabled numerous young people to receive professional support in training. The Cage Wolves contributed to promoting values such as solidarity, diversity and justice in everyday training. The gym was seen as a place of stability by the young people who trained there (see interview here).
The sad fact of the closure of the Cage Wolves also strengthens fairplay prevention in its efforts to further support sports structures in martial arts with prevention programs. Finally, the raid shows that the road to inclusive martial arts programs can still be a long and rocky one. Not least because of the fact that it obviously still needs further convincing of political decision-makers.
