Event of the week: US Open

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This week we focus on America’s largest open martial arts tournament.

The tournament has been around for 40 years and has become one of the most influential and prestigious tournaments to win, with categories where forms are challenged and even broken. Every year the event is broadcast worldwide on networks such as ESPN.

The US Open is distinguished from other events in that it embraces all open combat styles and formats, including Sport, MMA, Grappling, and Breaking. Additionally, it has been a leader in expanding basic combat sports competitions to include fight choreography, multiple synchronized team formats in traditional and open styles and weapons, exhibition teams, multiple light contact sparring styles including point, clash, and continuous, and much more.

The Open has also been the leader in separating amateur-level competitors from those black belts with truly world-level professional skills. This is in anticipation of the launch of the World Pro Sport Karate League and Tours.

This leadership in the organisation of the sport’s infrastructure is what drives participant participation and interest in the immense global mainstream sports media.

The most exciting competition types that we highlight at the US Open for worldwide television coverage are the professional divisions in Men’s Weapons, Women’s Weapons, Synchronized Forms and Weapons, Demonstration Teams, and Team Sparring. These major divisions are followed

closely related to Open Weight Sparring and the Traditional and Open Individual Forms for Men and Women.

The emerging Junior and Youth divisions are full of talent the likes of which we have never seen before in our under-18 divisions. Future SuperStars such as Pia Flores Rodrigues, Phillip Brumme, Luca Ricotti and too many more to mention are the future Super Champions of our sport, capable of skills and innovations that yesterday’s practitioners could only dream of, and the Champions of yesteryear never thought possible.