A long campaign finally came to a conclusion today. For those who don’t know my husband’s passion and sport is armored sword fighting with HMB (historical medieval battle). Earlier this year they decided to do something crazy and do three tough tournaments in four short weeks.

It started with the first Team USA qualifying tournament in Detroit (the national team that fights at the world championship called Battle of the Nations). They came in second which didn’t secure a spot on nationals since only the first place team is taken.

Next up with one weekend off was to be the very first USA team to fight at Dynamo Cup in Moscow. This is one of the biggest and toughest club based tournament in my husband’s sport. In a way it is invite only. Some people thought it was a bad idea to fight back to back with a short break. They were expected to get injured. They showed up and made a name for themselves. They left Moscow with new friends and strong connections. It took loosing to the second best team in Russia to knock them out of the tournament (Russia is the top country in HMB).

Here’s some video from Dynamo. Ordo fights are as follows with time stamps provided by Brandon Recor:

Day 1 Stage 2- TIME STAMP
ORDO DRACONIS vs. KONGO (21:41)W
ORDO DRACONIS vs. MEDVEZHATA (39:42)L
ORDO DRACONIS vs. HANSA (1:31:20)W
ORDO DRACONIS vs. AVALON (1:47:32)L
ORDO DRACONIS vs. BRATINA (1:58:49)W

First Round of the Playoffs
ORDO DRACONIS vs. GARZUKI(Belarus) (9:00:00) W

David flew back from Moscow and only had 4 days before the second national qualifier. There was a total of 34 fights in the tournament over 2 days. On the first day there was a full round robin with all 8 teams, which comes out to 28 fights 😵. David’s team fought every other team once and came out with 6 wins and 1 lose securing a second place seed for the next days play offs.

For those who know the teams I’ll let the play off fights. For those who don’t David is on Ordo Draconis and Iron Phoenix is Team USA (won the Detroit tournament)
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Iron Phoenix (won)
International Mercenary Team

Ordo (won)
Iron Rook
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Iron Phoenix
Ordo (won)

Merc Team (won)
Iron Rook
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Ordo (won)
Iron Phoenix
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It may look strange that Ordo fought Iron Phoenix twice but buhurt league requires a double elimination play offs so each team must loose twice to be eliminated. The Iron Phoenix vs Ordo matches were exciting to watch. They are both incredible teams. I’m so proud of the entire Ordo team. They showed tenacity, skill, teamwork, and just plain heart through this entire campaign! The entire team made it through without any serious injury. David walked away from each tournament with a few additional bruises and cuts but thankfully nothing more serious. Many doubted they could do it but they debuted and made USA proud on an international platform and secured a spot on team USA showing they are THE BEST USA 5’s team.