In 2019, a significant event took place. The old corrupt amateur organization has been replaced by the International Federation of Armwrestling, which now is careing of by amateur athletes and prepare them for more serious professional results.

Last year, the Professional Armwrestling League launched and conducted the first pilot project Top 8. At the beginning of the year, we carried out the first stage of the project on the Malaysian island of Borneo, the second stage in Shenzhen, China. The finals were hosted by the Zloty Tur in December.

Not everything went smoothly at the very beginning. We lost Andrey Pushkar, who was the main contender for participation in Top 8. The team from North America - Dave Chaffee, Michael Todd and Devon Larratt - were unable to participate due to contracts with another organization.

Further, no better. Denis Tsyplenkov fell ill, thereby making his participation in the project impossible. But he was replaced by Vitaly Laletin, who eventually took second place after Levan Saginashvili. WAF banned Gennady Kvikvinia from participating in the Top 8, because Gennady was the head coach of the Georgian team at that time. He was replaced by Kydyrgali Ongarbayev.

Nevertheless, the pilot Top 8 in the absolute weight category was successful. He inspired many hopes in amateur sports. Indeed, in fact, before the strict separation between amateurs and professionals, there were no: athletes went to Zloty Tur, after which they called themselves professionals, and then they also participated in world and European championships among amateurs. Now we are moving into another era, where amateur and professional armwrestling are two different things.