This tournamnet appeared in September 2011. Its organizer has been Jakub Janczy with his amazing team. Jakub is a armwrestler, he works at school as a PE teacher. Jablonka is a small town looking at Tatry from one side and Beskid from the other one. The tournament is located in a small amphitheater with a place for audience, which makes the atmosphere much hotter. The first edition of the tournament consisted of fights in a few weigh classes of amateurs, seniors and VIPs and the most important one which is OPEN PRESTIGE. In the first edition it was won by Andrey Pushkar who treated it as an introduction to NEMIROFF WORLD CUP 2011. The second was the Pole Jerzy Kwiatkowski.

This year the organizers chose a different date – the 7^th July and that’s what they plan to stick to. The players came from Check Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, from both neighboring towns and the whole Poland.

Open junior and amateur classes, seniors 85kg class, women open class were held – that could be enough for the whole tournament but it was just a prelude!

A great thing was a six round duel called Vendetta of Jan Germanus from Slovakia vs Mariusz Grochowski from Poland. Both players have already met many times with different effects. Due to the organizers they decided to determine once and for all who is better. It was worth to come to Jablonka only for these six rounds fought by Mariusz and Jan - the Vendetta. Mariusz appeared first, much earlier than his opponent, taciturn as always and concentrated. Jan came just before the official opening ceremony. They both came from upstairs, with dignity led by hostesses with the flags of Poland and Slovakia. They didn’t look straight in their faces, they didn’t look at the audience – the audience devoured every second of their fight, even before they set their elbows on the table. It was hard to say looking on their silhouettes who is in a better form. Mariusz looked as he did in Gdansk at the Europeans but… it turned out that he drew conclusions from the start in May! But let’s cut to the chase! The first round, long setting up, and the attack of the Slovakian, dynamic but Mariusz withstood it and caused the foul of the Germanus’s elbow.

  Then the continuation, the fight in the center of the table, Jan is unbelievable in his technique, Mariusz is getting tired but he manages to gain advantage and after a long “finishing” of his attack he manages to win. It’s 1:0. Seconds of both players come backstage. Janusz Kwiatkowski and Darek Muszczak help Grochowski to regenerate. The girls are trying to move the air. The first minute of the break is passing. In the second round of strength or even “brutal” fight dominates (although I shouldn’t write so), the Slovakian started again, again from an uncomfortable position, what faces! What an effort, what positions at the table! Our Mariusz is clam and withstands the Slovakian’s attack. We can observe the second elbow foul and 2:0 for the Pole. One minute regeneration helped Jan who achieved the result of 2:1. Then Mariusz won and it was 3:1. Every next round was much harder, no one gave no one even one centimetre. The fight took place under the name “They have their match”, so the perfectly chosen opponents, by all account. They’re not fast, they don’t have “a lightning” in their arms, but both are extremely strong and endure. Here the load was so huge that when Grochowski participated the OPEN PRESTIGE class a half an hour later, wanting to win a beautiful Orawa belt, he couldn’t beat any of his opponents. During the Vendetta, in these six rounds he left all his strength and hart by the table in Jablonka.

Mariusz Grochowski is now, in June a completely different player than he was during the European Championships. He’s better. I asked him how he was preparing. Mariusz replied that mainly by resting. He talked a lot with much experienced players and drew conclusions from previous preparatory cycles and decided that on the 7th July he’ll bet on freshness and fight hanger. He made it in 100%. Bravo Mariusz Grochowski. Also his opponents deserve respect and applause. We appreciate the opponent even as the terms he braved are harder, and  Germanus did his best. The motive of the fight was that Jan and Mriusz wanted to finally decide who’s better. In my opinion it’s worth to “check” it once more, here in Jablonka.

The next main point was the tournament for a beautiful Orawa belt and prize money. In hard, exciting duels, perfectly cheered by the audience, the belt was won by Piotr Szczerba from Tytan Jaworzno club, and the second was Michal Weglicki from ARMFIGHT Piaseczno. Darek Muszczak from Tytana Jaworzno ranked third. The players from Check and Slovakia managed to rank 5th and 7th among 14 players.

PeSzy