Event report: Shinergy[battle] Winter 2013

Last Saturday, this year’s first Shinergy[battle] was on. Great fights, great event, Fighters competed in four divisions:

Men, full contact sparring, +80kg
Men, semi-contact sparring, +185cm
Cadets, semi-contact sparring, catch weight
Women, semi-contact sparring, catch weight

For a short recap considering the rules, let me summarize the key points:

Fights are “best of three”, so it takes two won rounds to win a fight
Each round is two minutes, with one minute break in between rounds
Low-kicks, throws and takedowns are prohibited. Pretty much everything else, including but not limited to the following techniques, is fair play:

all kicks above waist level
all hand strikes (closed and open hand) above waist level
knee strikes above waist level, also to the head
elbow strikes above waist level, also to the head,
foot sweeps

it goes without saying that dangerous and unsportsmanlike actions such as fish-hooking, biting, eye-gauging, etc. are prohibited
full-contact bouts are fought in a continuous manner; the referee stops only in case of a foul or excessive clinching
semi-contact bouts are fought in a point/stop manner; the fight is interrupted every time a point was scored
to ensure the competitors safety, the following protective gear is mandatory:

open-hand gloves
shin protectors
foot protectors
groin protector
head gear with face protection (steel crate or similar)
body armor (grey- and blue-belt classes only, forbidden in red- and black-belt fights)

The basic idea was to create a set of rules for standup fighting that allow for action-filled, explosive and spectacular fights while at the same time ensuring the competitor’s safety. As an experiment, we organized the battle as an double elimination tournament this time (i.e., a ‚”Brazilian” KO-system), but this resulted in a ton of additional fights, so when the event becomes bigger (in terms of competitors), this ain’t going to be an option anymore.

From my school, four fighters took part: Andreas F, Andreas M, Alex S, and Michael H. I won’t go into detail on their fights here, as I’m planning to devote an analysis post to each one individually. Suffice to say that I’m proud of every single one of them. They did great. Things even look good on paper: we scored both gold and silver in the heavyweight full contact division.

Just as a first taste for things to come, here’s a couple photos from the event. More is due to come soon, so stay tuned!