– Point of View –

The question may seem easy. Some may think that an aspirant doesn’t need to understand the history of costume and armor, spend many hours training hard, like professional fighters. It’s enough to download the rules (http://botn.info/en-rules-regulations) and learn them by heart…

However, as practice shows, an outsider, who observed fights only on YouTube and managed to learn the rules, can not be a marshal. For high-quality refereeing a person needs a vast experience of real battles, participation in many events and tournaments. Learnig of rules is absolutely not enough for understanding real situations. Untrained eye is unable to see most of the actions of fighters which are clear to an experienced marshal.

Of course, an aspirant has to have a significant experience of fighting to claim for the title of competent and credible marshal. Even having a long combat experience in all the categories and being a permanent member of the National Team, you can hear a lot of new things concerning your personality and refereeing skills in the heat of the battle :). Therefore, for a person who absolutely does not know what’s going on there… In general, it will be very difficult, especially morally, because nobody likes marshals :). But, believe me, marshal’s job is very interesting and worthy!

Nikolai Avenirov, Ukraine,
HMB fighter and HMB Marshal