Dear all armwrestlers and WAF members, 

Do not be afraid of WAF latest warning letter about PAL or URPA. WAF works under WAF constitution and rules. And all decision can only be made with the support of congress in congress meeting or Executive Board meeting with minute and complete signatures of all the Boards.

Warning letter made by general secretary Mircea Simonescu does not come with explanation of constitution breach or instruction/order from Congress/executive board meeting.

Members are allowed to challenge the letter by asking which constitution rules or if any letter/minute signed by members or executive boards had been breached.

General secretary alone has no rights to give instruction/order of ban for athletes or event just based on his personal opinion.

PAL will prepare a lawyer to work on this issue and athletes and organizer should not worry as letter from general secretary Mircea Simonescu is not a valid representative of WAF collective decision.

WAF is a GAISF member therefore everything must follow constitution and collective decision.

In his message on behalf of the WAF, Mr. Simonescu directly misleads the members of the WAF about the World Cup “Senec Hand”.

First, contrary to his statement, the tournament is held according to the rules of the WAF and the WAF referees will referee at this event.

Secondly, all the members of the WAF are well aware of the rules of the competition, which correspond to the standards of URPA, as this is the WAF COMPETITION RULES!

In the tournament can participate both athletes registered in URPA, and athletes who are not registered in the ranking.

"Hidden commission" in the form of $ 50, is the cost of registration in the ranking and has no relation to the tournament. URPA is a private project that is engaged in technical support for the global rating and promotion of arm wrestling. This amount is not hidden, but on the contrary - voiced at every step.

PAL and URPA respect WAF as the World Federation and the governing body of armwrestling, and they have no desire to challenge or compete with it. This is the reason why we are applying WAF standards.
PAL is a privately owned promotion company that among many other things supply a a ranking service known as URPA.

If you don’t want to be in it, you don’t pay, and PAL/URPA will NOT ban you from anything, BECAUSE IT CAN’T, AND DOESNT WANT TO.

We would like to explain the rule from URPA rules, mentioned in Mircea Simonescu statement “PAL ban WAF referees”.

In certified URPA events only certified URPA referees are allowed to referee. 

URPA event will apply WAF rules as foundation. 

Every WAF referee, who would like to join URPA referee community will be granted URPA referee level corresponding to his WAF referee level. 

New referee will undergo URPA referee seminar.

However certification is subject to online training completion and approval by PAL referee panel.

Benefit of becoming URPA certified referee:

1. URPA certified referees will be paid for refereeing based on their URPA level

2. To assure high quality of URPA certified events, every competition will be assigned a level and will have requirements of choosing referees with an appropriate level

example:  event level 3 requires inviting referees with at least URPA referee level 3 (or higher)

URPA referee certifications will help organizers to choose appropriate referees for their events.

Allegation about URPA stealing membership from WAF.

URPA only appoint representative in every country to work with URPA ranking. PAL does not take over membership or sign any contract that prohibit athletes or federation to work with WAF. 

Representative status is not membership thus it does not go against WAF constitution.

URPA does not “organize” events, URPA is a unified ranking system the function is to create 1 ranking system for any event that meet URPA requirement.

No laws in WAF constitution that mention athletes must only compete in “WAF sanctioned event” unless national federation has separate constitution that mentioned so.

Any change in Constitution can ONLY be made in WAF world congress in world championship. 

Opinion based letter is not valid and is categorize as misused of position in WAF.

In short, the current WAF letter does not represent WAF collaborative  decision and only a decision made by general secretary. 

Please do not be afraid and proceed to support armwrestling in all level!