The whole season – 2020 is under threat or..?!
In recent months, the entire world has been following the geographical distribution of the coronavirus with bated breath. Someone was guided by fear for their own health, and, perhaps, life. Someone – by annoyance from the faltering economy. And HMB-fighters, who are used to planning tournaments for several months in advance, are now biting their elbows because of the cancellation of events one after another and, swallowing tears, go to hand over tickets.The first victims among fighters
At the very beginning, the Middle Kingdom’s fighters suffered. What it’s like to be at the epicenter of a pandemic, the captain of the Chinese team HALF-TON Gao Peng will tell us.
How did it all begin? What were the first major changes for China’s HMB?
It became total war in China at the end of January while Chinese New Year. Yep, it real sucks – we never had such a silence and boring vacation. And now for HMB guys in China, most important thing is that we can just train alone. As I know all fighters and marshals in China are safe including one new fighter in Wuhan. But we must stay home going out just for foods and necessaries or some have to back to work. So, based on this situation, we train alone and without gym (yes, they’re closed). When Buhurt Prime started, most of us watched it and talked about it on Wechat – the most popular social media app in China (after all, most of the world’s social networks, as well as their analogues, are banned in the Middle Kingdom – ed.note).
What was the last tournament you attended?
“Comrade in Arms” on the middle of January. It’s a great luck that we done a important event before all this virus madness began.
How are things now? Do you continue to train? How do you live???!!!! We are very worried about you!
Now in China, we can proudly say the epidemic began to abate, many new infected people in China are actually from Korea, Italy and Iran and after landed they were checked and diagnosed. Thank you for all the HMB mates! I’m fine, now find a new job back to work now (yes, with mask while in the company and wash hands very frequently). I never stopped training during February. I train six times per week because I HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO DO!!!!! (crying) Foods and necessaries are adequate. After goes to supermarket once per week, I even tried to cook some new dishes and my wife said they’re yummy!!! Also, I made a short combat animation about fighting with coronavirus – everyone can find it on my FB page (https://www.facebook.com/bigcatpeng)!
What do you expect in the future? Do you make plans?
In China everything goes better and better. I believe that we will win in two month. But this shit just begins in many other nations, so I expect our global citizens together get through this as soon as possible! For safety we will cancel all the tournements we planed to take part on first half of year, and will prepare events on the second half, mostly in China, like “BBT 6 Nations Challenge” and “2-nd Xitang Cup” on October, “3-rd Comrade in Arms” on December. All tournaments have buhurt, duels and profights, we will release our beast from our heart at that time after such a long time’s “jailing”!
Well, after such a long abstinence, the first tournament will be akin to the first kiss)) but let’s go back to our tournaments…
The first to cancel was the tournament in the United States – the organizers of Arnold Sport Festival three days before the event decided to exclude the audience and cancel the Expo zone, where the lists were supposed to be located and the HMB tournament was held.
But China and America are so far away, practically in another Universe! That is why like a bolt from the blue the news of the cancellation of the “Final of Polish Knight League” tournament in Poland, which was already destined for the glory of the “second Prime”, fell on everyone! The best teams in Europe, who planned to fight there, had only to support each other in the Internet and look forward to the Masters in Serbia. Meanwhile, we learned the opinion of Ola Lebdowicz – one of the organizers of the Polish tournament about this situation.
At what stage of preparation for the tournament was the order received that it was postponed indefinitely?
Our tournament was almost ready! Shortly before the cancel we got the last needed informations for the organization process. The poster was on its way. The only thing left to prepare was… just days to go by to the date of the tournament. Literally 19 days to the tournament we heard it’s not gonna happen as planned. Just “postponed”! – Until when? – Nobody knows!
What guided the government in making this decision? After all, thank God, the number of cases in Poland is not in the hundreds or thousands.
In my opinion the biggest issue for the city mayor was the fact that a lot of teams from abroad have registered for our tournament (which was wonderful for us, because we never had such an amazing tournament in our country!). Our media is going crazy with the articles about coronavirus. There’s plenty of fake news oscillating on the internet and people are getting paranoid. This is causing chaos and panic amongst society, number of cases in Poland for March, 18 was 156.
How do you comment on the situation with coronavirus for the HMB world? What would you recommend and what do you wish the fighters?
This virus spreading all over the world is definitely a huge problem for any kind of sport. New season has just begun and the tournaments take place at a wonderful spots in a multiple countries. Due to the virus and the government’s restrictions many of us won’t be able to participate and probably a lot of tournaments won’t happen or will be postponed to the yet unknown dates… It’s hurtful what’s happening right now, mainly because of our own society being so spread all over the world. The HMB tournaments gather so many people from so many countries. We all have friends from different teams and it’s just sad and hard to imagine we won’t be able to see each other for some time. We just have to keep doing what we love but separately. Just hoping it will be all over soon and we could share our buhurt love together again!
All season is under a threat?
And then the tournaments fell one after another: “Battle Stedinger” and “Way of Honor” in Germany, “Terra Australis IV” in Argentina, “Tournament of the Citadel 2020” in France… Countries began to close borders and establish a quarantine for newcomers.
So are the hopes of the fighters destined to come true? The grandiose project “Knights&Legends” in Serbia… has also been postponed. What does it all mean? Is the entire season under threat?!
Together with HMBIA representative Irina Kamaeva, we tried to understand the current situation and comment on it.
As a person who keeps his hand on the pulse of the HMB world, please, describe the situation with coronavirus in general: what should the fighters prepare for, whether to take tickets, how advance they must to plan trips?
Maybe, the HMBIA office have its finger on the pulse of the global HMB, but we are not the guarantor of the situation in the global financial markets and are not responsible for the Twitter of the world Health Organization, which, as it turned out, is used by a good part of the entire information community. Unfortunately, any planning has an enviable share of unforeseen circumstances. As organizers of major projects, we can safely recognize a regular percentage of participants or partners merging at the last moment, and this is even under the most favorable conditions. In the current situation, it becomes difficult to predict trips, because you have to focus on the decisions of airlines and the transport situation in a particular country or region. Logistics has always been one of the key points of increased complexity.
How does HMBIA advise the fighters to act in this situation?
First, we strongly recommend that you do not pump yourself with information from unverified sources. Hey, seriously! Now every first is eager to snatch its share of global hysteria. High-profile headlines are not always true. Secondly, do not rush to buy tickets, track the current situation on the official resources of events and tournaments where you would like to go. The organizers try to communicate any changes as quickly as possible. Third, try to come to terms with the fact that you will have to make up points after the situation stabilizes. Even now, you need to mentally prepare for the fact that trips will cost more than usual for some time. We also believe that the current trend to cancel events in a number of countries may significantly affect the projected annual rating of the Buhurt League. Of course, we hope to make up for lost time in the upcoming summer season, but the global situation today is unique for all of us and changes from hour to hour, so for now we will just be patient.
Here are the things… But let’s look at it from the other side! Wives will see their husbands, and children will see their fathers! 
fighters will have plenty of time to put their armor and weapons in order. If someone planned to take care of their health closely without separation from HMB – here is a chance! Let’s end the hysteria, stop hyping on the problem and start seeing the pros in everything.
fighters will have plenty of time to put their armor and weapons in order. If someone planned to take care of their health closely without separation from HMB – here is a chance! Let’s end the hysteria, stop hyping on the problem and start seeing the pros in everything.Health to all and take care of yourself!
