It’s not a secret that the HMB movement is developed unevenly around the world, but it evolves and expands every day. There are tournaments of local, national or international level which are constantly being held in different parts of the world.

Every fighter, every captain knows that participation in tournaments is the best way to develop oneself. But fighters face a problem trying to plan their trips as there’s no single list of events hold worldwide at the moment. Reenactors need such a list for them to be able to take their armor and go to an event being held at a certain time.

– Sergey Tsymbal, Deputy of HMBIA President for international relations:

“There were some attempts of making a world list of events, but they lacked logic, structure and realization of the task. That’s why HMBIA has set an important and difficult task of creating a world calendar of HMB tournaments on its web site. The Tournament Committee of the organization is dealing with the issue. All gathered information will be available on botn.info site. At the bottom of the main page visitors would see an “International HMB tournaments calendar” line. I.e, an international calendar of HMB tournaments will be at their disposal. At the moment you can see there a number of events being held in different parts of the world. They are marked by special signs on the map. It’s only a beginning, in the future there will be more and more signs on the map”.

HMBIA think it’ll help both fighters and fans to make plans for events. The tournament map is available to all users of the site.

At the moment a preliminary launch of the calendar is taking place on botn.info site. The map includes several tournaments which were agreed on with organizers and team captains. According to representatives of the Tournament Committee, if someone wants to add an event to the single list, he/she has to send an e-mail (to HMBIA) giving all the details about the event. Every application is checked by moderators before a new event is added to the map. In future, the tournament map will refresh every week.

Soon, due to some new features of BotN’s site, HMB tournament organizers will get more freedom to act, which means an organizer will be able to add an event and accompanying information (time and venue, logo, categories, photos and event history) on their own. The description will also bear info about participants. It will motivate fighters, since there’s always an opponent they want to meet on the lists. It ensures a fighter has enough information before making a decision.

HMBIA supports and promotes competitions of different levels around the world. However, it has certain demands for tournaments: 1) a tournament should be open to all, regardless of what kind of club, organization or association a fighter represents; 2) at least one category of the tournament should be held according to the HMBIA rules and rules of the HMB World Championship “Battle of the Nations.” Concerning the second point, as representatives of HMBIA say, all tournaments are held according to those rules. So, no difficulties should arise.

– Sergey Tsymbal, Deputy of HMBIA President for international relations:

“If your event meets our criteria – welcome to our website and our tournament grid! Besides, this kind of cooperation means that you’ll receive certain bonuses from HMBIA. First of all, we are ready to provide the tournament organizers with promotional materials, namely flyers, flags of “Battle of the Nations” and HMBIA, information support for the tournament, etc. It is a mutually beneficial partnership. We personally discuss the format of our cooperation with our old and new partners, including sending of accredited HMB-marshals to tournaments. They will not only help with refereeing the event, but will also conduct a series of trainings for local marshals, helping them to gain experience in practice. Depending on the scale of the tournament, we discuss the required number of the marshals.”

After all, the main benefit of putting your tournament on the map is an additional PR activities. Organizers get more traffic and attract international audience whose attention is focused on the tournament.

– Sergey Tsymbal, Deputy of HMBIA President for international relations:

“Today there are not many tournaments which people know and attend. But in fact, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of different activities around the world. And many of them are really of high level! But they are not known to the general public. With the growth of our association’s potential, we will be able to provide more help. We are interested in making big tournaments even bigger, and small ones bigger and bigger.”

Katherine Koda,

HMBIA News