The second World Grappling Committee (WGC) annual meeting took place at the FILA headquarters in Corsier-sur-Vevey (Switzerland) on February 28th, 2009. The members of the newly structured WGC were brought together to discuss and establish the standards that will guide the sport of Grappling and its organization for the next four years.
Second World Grappling Committee Official Meeting
Attended the meeting Mr. Raphael Martinetti (FILA President), Mr. Jean-François Court (WGC Coordinator), Mr. Jason Towsend (Head of Grappling Pan-America), Mr. Rafael Perlungher (Head of Grappling Europe), Mr. Lazaros Papadopoulos (Head of Grappling Oceania), Mr. Hideo Kamaga (Head of Grappling Asia),
and Mr. Willem Putter (Head of Grappling Africa). Under the new WGC structure, the continental representatives will be responsible for supporting the growth and development of the sport in the countries within their respective continents, as well as promoting the organization of FILA sanctioned events and Continental Championships. Contact details of all Committee members are available on the FILA website under “Grappling”.
After conducting an analysis of the first World Grappling Championship that took place in Lucerne (SUI) on 20-21 December 2008, the Committee decided to bring some modifications to the International Grappling Regulations. The following changes are in effect as of February 2009 and will remain in force until the end of 2012:
– New weight classes for males: 60, 66, 74, 84, 96, 120 kg and Absolute (open weight ).
– New weight classes for females: 55, 59, 63, 67 kg and Absolute (open weight category).
– The referees will no longer be able to declare a technical submission (“catch”) for senior competitions.
-The duration of senior matches will be 5 minutes with 1 minute overtime.
-The half guard restart position will no longer be used and half mount will no longer be considered a dominant position
-1 point will be awarded for takedowns (if there is top control for 3 seconds).
-1 point will be awarded to disadvantaged grapplers if they manage to escape and go
to neutral or top position.
-In overtime, the choice of position, either top or bottom, will be given to the grappler who received the most passivity infractions, and if there is a tie in this criterion, to the grappler who scored the lowest value of points. If no grappler can be decided between by these two criteria, the red grappler will get the right to
choose the position,
-Sweeps shall now be considered escapes and will be awarded points as so.
Other minor changes were made and can be consulted by downloading the complete
International Grappling Regulations here.
Regulations are now also available in Portuguese here and in French here.
Another major decision made in this meeting was to held the second World Grappling
Championships in the United States, the American National Grappling Committee will
soon announce more details of the competition which will be held in the second semester of 2009.
Tiago Okamura
For the World Grappling