Ikigai Submission Grappling’s blue belt tournament descended into controversy this week when organizer Steven Henshall removed a competitor from the bracket over eligibility violations. The tournament had a clear rule: only competitors with fewer than six years of training in any grappling art could enter any in hopes to win the £5000 grand prize.
- The removed competitor either failed to read the rules or deliberately misrepresented his background. His coach’s response was telling. He claimed that MMA competition and freestyle wrestling “have nothing to do with grappling,” a statement that suggested either genuine confusion or a deliberate attempt to place the competitor into a bracket where he did not belong.
Avazbek Akyolov and his team blamed ‘politics’ for removal from the tournament. Akyolov actually sent his 4th pro MMA opponent out of the cage on a stretcher.
- The competitor had won wrestling competitions years earlier and carried a veteran MMA record. Both backgrounds transfer directly to submission grappling.
- Henshall posted publicly about the removal on Instagram. It was clear he was frustrated but deliberate.
“Absolutely wasn’t pulled for an unknown reason, the coach was rang a fortnight ago and told his guy either didn’t read the rules (under 6 years training in ANY grappling art) or tried to get one past me, his response ‘MMA fig hting and freestyle wrestling has nothing to do with grappling’ is a new one on me 🤦♂️
I ha te pulling people, but this tourney was made for blue belts with real blue belt training time, not 18 year olds who’ve trained since they were 3 or Olympic wrestlers and 20 year vet MMA fig hters (when I do them tourneys for that level that’s fine) but this one I wanted a real blue belt to get a shot not get wrecked off a black belt who’s been training 15 years wearing a blue belt.
His guy was winning wrestling comps way back when, so he’s got too much experience for this particular tourney it’s that simple.”
“I also don’t like doing all this screenshot s***e it’s playground stuff but It’s hard to build a trusted show and when people start spreading untruthful s**e on the internet it can really hurt us and stop us from continuing, which costs a lot more people than just me.”
We Caught Up With Promoter Steven Henshall To Dig Deeper
On how you decide who qualifies for a blue belt bracket, given that belt standards aren’t standardized across gyms
“It’s really difficult to keep a fair playing field if your only metric to go by is rank. Sandbagging now is pretty much expected amongst competitors, let alone accepted. I run different types of tournaments with specific criteria to keep the tournament as fair as I possibly can. Belt rank is one part of the criteria in most of my tournaments, but weight, time training and other experience, for example in MMA, all have to come into consideration when I’m putting a tournament together. There is a huge difference in experience and often skill between a blue belt who only does jiu jitsu and a blue belt who rarely trains gi but has a background in wrestling or MMA, or has trained since a child and is wearing a juvenile blue belt.”
On the criticism that your ticket sales model excludes skilled competitors who don’t have a local community behind them
“My answer to that criticism is pretty much every competition is run by that model, a competitor with a good name or lots of achievements gets main card spots but competes for nothing or very little depending on that organisation’s business model. That’s nothing new. What we’ve done is something new and something that’s being copied up and down the country because it opens up a pathway for lesser-known or lesser-accomplished competitors to earn huge amounts of money.
The fact is, if you can’t get people to watch you, you’ve got a problem, and that goes for any sport. If you can’t sell tickets, you’ll never earn any money in this or any other sport. That’s just the way it is. The best of anything don’t always make the most money. The best known in any sport earn the most money. That’s life. Don’t complain, find a way to make yourself marketable for a sponsor who might back you or make yourself an exciting competitor people want to watch.
That said, I’ve hosted open josie tournaments for spots in our main tournaments, so we have opened up routes for people who might not be able to sell as many tickets. But the ones complaining the loudest don’t enter them, so what can we do?”
On whether paying out £10,000+ to sub-black-belt ranks actually makes them professionals
“You need both, we need to see the very best guys in the sport competing against each other, and we also need a pathway for lower ranks to earn money, all we done was create that space, if you can earn £10,000 for one nights work doing anything, I think that makes you a professional, no matter your rank.”
Ikigai Submission Grappling 12 card takes place Saturday 19th September in Manchester. Ikigai 13 will be featuring 32 men tournament featuring grapplers with under 6 years of grappling experience vying for a grand prize of £25,000 to the winner.
