Ionko Kamburov -2nd place absolute division, Borislav Kirilov 1st place absolute division, Kiril Alexiev – president of Gladiator Bokido

Author: Ivan Miroslavov Dimitrov

This Sunday, on the 18th of November, team Gladiator Bokido made their third No points – submission only grappling tournament in Sofia, Bulgaria. The president of the club Mr. Kiril Alexiev together with his boys did a great job with the organization and more than 100 competitors participated in this event, which is rather a big turnout for our standards. Competitors with different backgrounds (such as wrestling, MMA, BJJ etc.) came and competed at this highly regarded tournament.
The rules were such that stimulated the attractive and technical game and this made the event as interesting as possible for the public. The one 10 minute round , no points, no advantages rules explained why there were 7000 people watching it at home live via the internet. Submission is the mission as they say! This kind of events are nothing new to the Bulgarian grappling scene though, as they are already a significant part of the tournament schedule during the last several years.
Most of the prominent Bulgarian BJJ and MMA teams such as Twisted Jiu-Jitsu, Real Pain, Bokido, Pitbulls, Bully Team, Police Karate-jiu jitsu club Varna and Desant from Varna took part in the event and this undoubtedly raised its quality. A lot of Bulgarian professional MMA fighters came to the event as well, including Stanislav Nedkov who recently fought Thiago Silva in UFC 153. We also had the chance of witnessing the skills of the Serbian black belt Nenad Latincic who is currently staying at one of the major clubs in Sofia – Real Pain. Nenad showed excellent grappling in the 85 kilos division which he won.
The biggest prize in the tournament is usually the cup, awarded to the “most technical fighter” (initially the first tournament that was held several years ago had a medal for the most beautiful and technical submission) which has found its way all three times so far to the hands of one of Twisted Jiu-Jistu`s instructors – Borislav Kirilov. Borislav, who together with his brother Vladimir, was recently awarded the purple belt in BJJ, won in impressive fashion all of his fights in the 75 kilos division via fast submissions. Then he continued on his victorious path in the absolute division with the same precision and accuracy. He cleaned it again with submissions after amazing fights with much heavier opponents. In the finals he managed to submit via RNC Yonko Kamburov, one of the experienced competitors of one of the major BJJ and MMA teams in Sofia – Real Pain.

Nikolay Dobrudzhanski -1st place -90kg division, Alexandar Georgiev-2nd place -90kg division

With this event the fans of the sport had the great opportunity to witness a lot of exciting matches which were a definite testimony that the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and grappling scene in Bulgaria is making a progress. A lot of new and interesting events took place in Bulgaria in the last several years and this definitely contributed towards the growth of Martial Arts in the country. Of course, there is still a lot more to do and improve and there are always “glitches in the Matrix”, but the overall progress of the guys that compete in similar events, shows that people are constantly learning and improving their skill set which makes every new tournament even more interesting and exciting to watch.
Borislav Kirilov 1st place -75kg division and 1st place absolute division.

One of the matches in the absolute division which displays some beautiful techniques.