Team UK participated in “Battle of the Nations” World Championship in France in 2013. I did not fight then as I didn’t know about the sport. 95% of the team that fought in “Battle of the Nations” this year were new fighters, who had never fought in any HMB-tournaments before and who started their training in January (including myself). We did well as for novices, we learnt a lot, we were proud of ourselves, and we will be a very competitive team (which is our main goal) in 2015.

Our training and tactics have massively changed, all our fighters do their best in every aspect of their training and I would be proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with any of them, they all know what it takes to be a competitive team and fighter.

“Battle of the Nations”-2014 was my first event and I was surprised by the Eastern European teams, it was amazing to observe their fights. My most memorable fight was against “Russia 3”, that team was like a machine. So, fighting on the lists against the Russians filled me with adrenaline, my heart was thumping in my chest, and we all made the mistake of not thinking and fighting like individuals. After the fight I was thinking that any machine breaks at some point and I was contemplating over the ways of breaking that Russian machine.

Concerning 2015, I hope the event will be bigger and even better, as HMB is growing at a fast rate. I hope that Team UK will become very competitive and we will do a lot better than this year. We have experience of 2014 and a whole year ahead to train hard. It would be nice to have more sponsors in 2015 to be able to travel and fight, which, in turns, helps HMB to grow.

John Quayle,
fighter of “Vectis knights” club,
fighter of the National Team of United Kingdom

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