Fake Worlds.jpg

The World Beard and Moustache Championships coming to Portland this weekend is a fraud, according to organizers of the other World Beard and Moustache Championships.

(We Support the True WBMC)

You would expect to find a lot of peculiarities at the World Beard and Moustache Championships. Bizarre beard art? Absolutely. Hilariously-named categories? Of course. International controversy? Apparently so.

As Portland prepares to welcome the international facial hair competition this weekend, a strong contingent of beardsmen around the world is lobbying a campaign against the event, calling it an illegitimate sham.

"The event taking place on October 25, 2014 in Portland, Oregon, USA shares nothing of the history or integrity of the name it inaccurately boasts," the group, known as "We Support the True WBMC," wrote in an email. "Those event organizers do NOT have the authority to award any World Beard and Moustache Championship titles, nor do they have the authority to reassign these titles."

The central problem is that there are currently two separate organizations who host international facial hair competitions, both named the World Beard and Moustache Championships. The swirling controversy focuses on one man at the middle of it all: California beardsman Phil Olsen.

"You'd have to write a book the length of 'Moby Dick' to explain it all," Olsen said about the issue. "The deal is there's another group made up of people who put on their own beard contest, and they want to see this event fail."

Phil Olsen.jpg

History of Competitive Bearding 101

Organized facial hair competitions have been going on in Europe since the early 1970s, but the first modern event took place in 1990, hosted by the First Höfener Beard Club in Germany. In 1995 local European clubs made the contest a global competition, agreeing to hold it every other year in a new location.

Phil Olsen attended the competition in 1999, coming away thoroughly impressed but noting a lack of American representation. He went home and founded Beard Team USA, setting his sights on popularizing competitive facial hair at home, and growing it into an Olympic-level sport worldwide.

In 2003 he took his first steps in that direction. He helped bring that year's contest to the U.S. for the first time, managing the event in Carson City, Nevada. It was then that he says he came up with the name for the "World Beard and Moustache Championships," but his claim is refuted by the European organizers, now known as the World Beard and Moustache Association, which contends the name has been around since the start.

The biennial championships returned stateside in 2009, hosted in Anchorage, where the U.S. team upset the Germans for the first time, winning 12 of 18 categories, according to Beard Team USA. The Germans eventually took the title back, but Olsen wasn't done stirring up competition overseas.

WILLI CHEVALIER

Trademarked

Controversy first erupted when Olsen's Beard Team USA was allegedly denied voting membership in the WBMA, a decision he said was based on a strict definition of a facial hair "club."

At the heart of that definition is a philosophical difference that has Olsen rankled: The European clubs are small, charge dues and require applications for admission, he said, while his American organization is free and open to anyone interested in competing.

He's hosted national competitions for U.S. beardsmen since 2010, but after the snub he decided to break the biennial European tradition by hosting his own "world championships" in Portland during the event's off year in 2014.

The WBMA decried his competition, calling it illegitimate and even illegal, but they had no legal ground on which to stand – back in 2003, Olsen filed for and received the rights to use the phrase "World Beard and Moustache Championships" from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

A contingent of clubs lashed out on Facebook earlier this year, but Olsen hit back with his legal standing. In response, Facebook took down the page of the European organization (it's now back up), only adding more fuel to the fire.

"I don't think Phil was being very intelligent when he chose to use that name in Portland," WBMA president Hans Hamrin told the L.A. Times. "He has made a lot of enemies now, especially among the Germans since they started this whole [facial-hair competition] thing back in 1990 and 1995. They are very angry."

Jedediah Aaker

The Show Goes On



With no legal standing as of now, the group of dissenting clubs can only try to discredit Olsen's Portland event. They've already convinced some sponsors to drop out, and several American clubs have agreed to not attend.

"WBMA has recommended their clubs NOT to go to Portland since the competition is NOT a real WBMC," Hamrin wrote on Facebook.

His group is considering legal challenges against Olsen's trademark, but the international barriers might make that fight tricky. Regardless, it should all come to a head in 2017, when the WBMA plans on hosting its competition in Austin, Texas. Olsen could challenge their legal right to do so, but it would surely result in international facial hair outrage.

It's not that he's trying to be difficult, he said, he just wants to see the World Beard and Moustache Championships grow, and he doesn't seem to trust the WBMA's ability to grow it.

"My end game is to see the world championships become a truly world class event and worldwide phenomenon," he said. "I want it to be the tongue in cheek Olympics, where people all over the world know about it and root for their country."

It sounds like a noble goal, but the European founders seem content to keep their status quo, with contests open to approved facial hair clubs, held every other year, and done for friendship and camaraderie, not for attention or financial gain.

USA beard and mustache contests 32 Gallery: USA beard and mustache contests

While Olsen's event certainly feels more commercial, he argues that it allows for a truly open competition. Anyone with a beard or a mustache can enter the Portland event for a $40 registration fee, regardless of club status.

The whole fight seems to come down to the philosophical divide of how big the world competition should be. While the clubs continue to fume, the American maverick insists that he truly wants to continue a friendly relationship with the beardsmen that started it all.

"Hopefully those who are fanning the flames, and who lit the fire to start with, will cool off a little bit and there will be happier times," Olsen said. And as for the contentious Portland competition? "If you have a problem with it, don't come."

* * *

2014 WORLD BEARD AND MOUSTACHE COMPETITION

When: Saturday, Oct. 25

Where: Keller Auditorium (map it)

Tickets: $40 to compete, $10 to attend

--Jamie Hale