A lot of adrenaline, passions, intrigue was present at the event… But even heat followed by a shower eventually yielded to fighters and guests of “Battle of the Nations”-2014  Many points were absolutely new. Championship organizers tried to surprise the participants and guests of the festival. But we will talk about that in detail.

So, according to most viewers, fighters and experts, the title of “Main Episode of the Championship” should be given to the battle “Russia-1 vs Belarus-1,” the battle for the finals in the category of “5 vs 5″. Everything seemed to be quite predictable! But … Everyone who witnessed the battle was surprised! The marshals announced the results of the bout and awarded the victory to Belarusians. Everyone was silent. Nobody could believe the champions were defeated! It’s like “King is dead! Long live the

As for the innovations, organizers of “Battle of the Nations”-2014 worked hard all year long and got good results. Feedback given by the spectators and participants of the tournament proves that. And it is worth to stop here and cover the issue in all its aspects.

“About fifteen girls registered for female friendly fights, ten of them for buhurts and more than a half for professional fights. The girls were eager to participate in all the categories. Those girls who participated in triathlon asked me to leave their fights for the end of the Championship, to avoid a situation when accidental injury could prevent their participation in the competition. I hope that it will become a tradition and in a year or two there will be group rating battles for women,” said Morgulis.

Many fans of the HMB movement welcomed the appearance of oral commentators for online broadcasts. Thanks to the work of those professionals, the level of event perception by the audience increased, as the viewers did not have to guess what was happening on the lists. In addition, the audience learnt a lot about the history of the teams and intricacies of the rules. It should be noted that it was nice to read positive reviews concerning the work of commentators:”Thank you, commentators. I do not remember your names, but you are awesome! I hope you will work next year,” wrote a viewer of the HMB World Championship “Battle of the Nations”-2014″ online broadcast.

“Commentation shoul be done in several languages for the convenience of viewers. We assembled a team of international experts. They, in addition to their main work as commentators, answered questions and engaged in a dialogue with representatives of different language groups. This year our team was joined by writing commentators Miguel Garcia from Argentina and Ramon Maldonado from the USA. They helped to comment in English and Spanish. I was a writing commentator for English and Russian languages simultaneously.

Directly on the site of the HMB World Championship “Battle of the Nations”-2014, in Trogir, we had Ivan Koryagin (from Russia), Mathias Kainz (from Austria), and an Italian Lorenzo Gentile, who worked in audio format. They also responded to questions of the

As any competition, “Battle of the Nations”-2014 had some disputable issues, but another innovation of the Championship helped to solve them. Many remember the dispute concerning the fight between Russia-1 and Belarus-1. To understand what happened and to make the right decision the referees turned to video replays. An advantage (and a chance to win) almost went to Belarusians, but the marshals and team captains used the opportunity of video replay and made a legitimate and fair decision.” The issue was commented on by Vitali Makaryan, field marshal of the HMB World Championship «Battle of the Nations»-2014, longtime member of the HMB movement.

“It was one of the most difficult moments of the Championship. The fighter was withdrawn from the fight, because the disputable issue was assessed by two marshals as a violation of rules. Only watching video replay, from the cameras that shot from above, it was clear that there was no violation. We predicted such situation long before the Championship. To avoid mistakes we introduced cards of appeal and video replays. Field position of a marshal is not static, it depends on the location of fighters on the lists. Chief Marshal, at that moment, was my Polish colleague, while the representative of the Baltic states and I were field marshals. After watching the video replay we decided to repeat the third round in the format “3 vs 3.” Captains of the teams were present when we watched the video replay”- said Makaryan.
audience in different languages. However, the commentation was mostly in English, as it is considered an international language.

Also, for the first time in the history of the Championship, representatives of the same country had to fight against each other. And it happened that

a team with no defeats had to leave the Championship. However, professionals say that such cases, when teams from the same country meet in the playoff, are quite common in other sports, and they are not considered as mistakes or rigging. The issue was commented on by Ivan Koryagin (HMBIA development committee member):

As a member of HMBIA development committee, namely as an official representative of the organization, I can say that it was
an example when we strictly follow the rules. This situation showed one more time that we do not help Championship favourites, do not break draw rules, the issue was fair. We’ll continue to work this way in future,” said Koryagin.
Sergey Tsymbal, Deputy of HMBIA President for international relations, also commented on the situation,

“Unfortunately, this time we had a situation when some teams (as well as men participating in the “duel” category) being representatives of the same country appeared in one part of the grid, and, thus, had to drive each other out of the Championship. But it’s a standard system, which is common worldwide,
it was adopted by the Olympic Committee and it did not rule out the possibility of opposition between teams from the same country. The system allowed us to give up manual change of the order of fights. Now, if the teams from one country have to fight before the ¼ finals, the loser continues fighting in the other grid and goes to the final. It’s the way our system works. We get feedback, we can see all the advantages of the new system and some of its disadvantages, we work on it, improve it, and I believe this system will become the basic one for HMB tournaments around the world,” said Tsymbal.

HMB World Championship “Battle of the Nations”-2014 is history now. Summing up, we can say for sure that it was a glorious battle! Undoubtedly, it was a step forward for HMB sport. The event was mass, entertaining, intriguing… What will it be next year, in 2015? What innovations will we see? Will the next event be so breathtaking? Only time will tell. As the saying goes, “better than mountains can be only mountains.”