Greg Dillon and the U.S. Marine Corps, are working together to bring a Martial Arts Tournament to Madison.

During the West Virginia Coal Festival, Dillon and his dojo of students were raising funds for the purchase of a new martial arts mat.

“What we have right now is a wrestling mat. We’re raising the money for a new mat for safety purposes for those events,” Dillon said.

According to Dillon, a new mat will cost approximately $7,000 and will be 2-inches thick. “With this new mat we would be able to transport it to other places in the community,” he said, sharing that this past year, a church or school group at Uneedo couldn’t do an outdoor event because of liability issues.

“If they had this mat, they could have put their Jupiter jump on it and they would have been fine.” Dillon said, further noting that he would make every attempt to lend the mat out to organizations and groups such as that.

“The community can be served by this if they take care of it [the mat],” he says. “But, predominantly, it is for me.”

Dillon estimates that the proposed martial arts tournament will draw approximately 300-400 people. “Anytime you have hundreds of people visiting a town for something like this, that has the potential to last a few days, it will bring money back to the local economy. They have to buy their food and gas somewhere, and if Madison doesn’t do it, some other town will jump on it.”

According to Dillon, he has been working out the details with Sgt. Foster, of the U.S. Marines, who works in the Boone County area as a recruit.

According to Foster, the Marines are also interested in the possibility of constructing a physical fitness obstacle course somewhere in Madison, where he can bring his recruits and new Marines to train.

Greg Dillon’s martial arts dojo studio are located on Main Street, downtown Madison.