Behind the scenes
# 4

Travis, what happened?
We evaluate Travis Bagent performance at Nemiroff World Cup 2011. Let's look at three weight classes he took part in.

Three?
Yes! Here a serious question arises, why did we see this player ONLY in three weight classes.

Friday, the +95 kg left hand class, in his first duel Travis met Pushkar and lost. Then he won with a Norwegian Darius Anelauskas. He successively beat the representative of Finland Henri Hermola. In his fourth fight, he beat Martin Skalski (Poland). In his fifth fight he confronted with a Russian Sergei Patrikeev who won. With one defeat on the account, on the way to the semi-finals he had to be overcome only a representative of Kazakhstan Dmitriy Trubin what he did. Semifinal was a copy of the first fight.  Andrey Pushkar walked over Travis and he remained undefeated.

There is still hope?
In the open left hand Travis’s way was as follows: defeat with Artem Taynov. Another defeat with Dmitriy Trubin ended his Friday’s performance.

It’s not evening yet!
There was still one - Saturday's right hand competition. First, in +95 class. Travis lost the first fight with Viacheslav Karpov (Russia). He recoiled in on Jakub Janczy (Poland) and won the duel. The third opponent disillusion Travis. Sergei Patrikeev sent Travis to the locker room.
Consequently we did not see him in the open category of the right hand.

Evaluation
As famous Polish football trainers used to say after losing matches “The time for the assessment will come ...” . Four days passed, the time came. We evaluate not only the Travis’s performance itself but also ne with, but the legitimacy of inviting him to this year's Cup.

Igor’s assumptions

The Clash of Two Worlds was coming, as in the time of the ‘Cold War’, of which fortunately most of our young fans have not even heard. The clash, the battle and gray smoke. For warrant officers (in the poster) chosen were: from the western world -Travis Bagent, from the eastern world - Denis Cyplenkov. Their images were visible in the poster promoting this year's Nemiroff World Cup. Was that right?

The Assumption - certainly yes. Since always, the entire sports rivalry between East and West is a kind of confrontation. Players from the USA and Canada have their justified reasons to claim to be undefeated. Competitors from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan also do. Each of their meeting is a kind of confrontation and this is what arises powerful emotions of viewers worldwide.

Armwrestling is not a hammer throw, where you can clearly say - who actually did the best score of the season. Armwrestling is a combat sport, in which often even a defeat - after a good fight - raises high quotations of the player. Therefore, I always admire the skills of the organizers of predicting whom to invite to participate in the World Cup.

But now it’s time to settle with these predictions!

Was the invitation for Travis Bagent a good decision? When I saw him at a press conference I thought it wasn’t not! He seemed to much thinner, for a start. But, after all we do not play bodybuilding competitions. Maybe he is more trained, maybe faster, maybe he just got thinner naturally?

I began to look at Travis and I felt anxiety. It was not Travis, whom I remembered from the stay in Poland, and especially not the one from duels with Farid Usmanov and Alexey Semerenko. Not the same smile, not the flash of eyes, not this way of speaking. He was quiet and timid, upon my words!

I asked Igor if he was sure that this was a good choice to invite Bagent. Igor said he was sure that an American  can afford great fights and if he cares about the score he will go the whole hog, including balancing on the border of fair play to win only. Just as it was in 2006 against Usmanov, when the opponent prepared by Andrey Junkova a famous Huck Fighter he could not stand his behavior, tricks, on the border of sportsmanship. Just like in Manchester in the famous “fight without fighting” with Semerenko ended with a draw 3 : 3 giving nothing, no one.

Besides, Igor Mazurenko added, let's not forget that Travis won the World Cup in 2005, then, although he did not competed with then, he received a special award on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Tournament for the Zloty Tur Cup with a honorary diploma (the distinction was received on behalf of the absent by his countryman John Brzenk). So the presence of the American armwrestler at the Cup seemed totally justified.
In my opinion there is one more reason of calling this year's Cup the “Clash of Two Worlds”. Americans felt too strong recently and it was a good idea to confront them with opponents from Europe, and especially of its eastern edges.

Let the table show!

The American Star vs the Russian or Ukrainian Star ...

One more thing! Travis, since the success in Poland (2005) has not stopped developing as a player. Quite the contrary! He conducts seminars, explains techniques of fighting, mostly top fighting, he takes part in other sport challenges. Hard fact  - a fight of Travis’s left hand, with the whole wealth of his left hand techniques, and Denis, who is much more ‘predictable’ was supposed to be just ‘a spark’ to kindle the flame of the ‘Two Worlds Clash.’
We are still at a press conference and still know that this unpredictable American can administer all the tricks to make the Russian’s blood boil before the fight, before they walk up to the table, before they capture each other's hands, before the fight starts, and during the fight. Is Denis able to stand it mentally?

At the same conference, everything was like in a film for young people entitled  “Cordial Sports Friendship and Bla, Bla, Bla ... ?. Smiles, posing for photographs, no provocation. A but sleepily, as the day before the ‘Battle’. I thought then, that a flight across the ocean takes many hours there is a change of time zones, a need of some kind of acclimatization, so it could be the reason for Travis to be less dynamic than we had expected? Let the table show!

Well, it did!

How then mistakenly I thought that Denis would be under Travis’s pressure. But I was wrong,  even here on our website, writing that the presence of John as the trainer of the Americans turns the scales in their favour! Nothing more misreported. Now, from the perspective of four days from the end of the tournaments, it was clearly seen that it was Travis to be under pressure!

Cyplenkov, according to some people, had to feel threatened as the ‘historic’ owner of two Cups. Okay, Cyplenkov’s case was solved, but without the participation of Travis.

Let's go back to the American

He did nothing, we expected him to do! He was a shadow of himself. Is it therefore Igor Mazurenko’s mistake that he invited him? Is it still worth to invite him? Yes, it is!

Americans at the Cup, at this Nemiroff World Cup scene in Ozarow Mazowiecki felt “alone, trapped, exposed to the shot”. The audience, was to be, as I anticipated, against Denis, because people always shout “Beat the Champion!”. However, I do not know why, but fans enjoyed Bagnet’s failures! Unfathomable are the criteria of sympathy of the fans, indeed, unfathomable.

According to the organizer, Igor Mazurenko, Travis is still a great fighter. This particular World Cup was unlucky for him. But it is still on the list of candidates to participate the next Professionals’ World Cup 2012.

PeSzy