The West’s notions of fair play and how an international tournament should be run are, it would seem, at odds with that of the East’s. Dissent has been stirring among the camps and honor was called into question on several sides, and complaints started to be raised about the Russian organizers. The first to percolate were stories about rule-changing and underhand tournament organization.

“They said that under no circumstances can you have a metal handle on your shield, and that you can’t wear titanium armor,” U.S. team captain Andre Sinou tells me later over the phone from his native New Jersey. Sinou is also the owner of an armory manufacturer called Icefalcon. “So I told my guys that. Then when we went out there, all the Eastern teams had metal handles. We complained, and they said, ‘Oh, we sent out a memo,’ which none of the Western countries got.”

Many of the Eastern fighters were wearing Kevlar armor under their suits and came with lethal equipment — such as two-handled halberd axes — that was banned for anyone else. “The weapons that some of the Eastern teams were using were just dangerous,” Sinou says. “They were pointy, they didn’t follow the rules for sharpness. After 2013, we had puncture wounds — we had a meaty guy who got punctured all the way down to the bone on the shoulder. It hit his spine. He could have been paralyzed.”

Nick Birkin echoes many of these complaints and adds his own stories of match fixing, detailing devious techniques that would put a Sochi figure-skating judge to shame and which apparently allowed Russian teams to progress further and enjoy longer rest breaks between contests. But the growing concerns of an increasing number of countries was met by a response almost laughably Kafkaesque.

“They said they’d put us on a committee, which would be headed by a Russian or a Ukrainian,” Sinou says. “They flat-out said they don’t trust somebody who’s not Russian or Ukrainian. This committee will report to another committee, and the head of that will be a Russian or Ukrainian. And they’ll report to a subcommittee, which will have a Russian or a Ukrainian at the head of it. And they’ll report to a presidium with their findings.”

For a sport that thrives on primal release and cathartic violence, it’s all a bit…mundane. “It’s typical Russian soviet socialist layering of bureaucracy,” Sinou concludes. Just who runs — or at least funds — the whole HMBIA thing is another topic of intense speculation, and I get everything from “some Russian oligarch” to “Russian mafia.” (The HMBIA has not responded to a request for comment, but did refer to this post addressing controversies.)

The issue of women fighting was another area of livid debate. The U.K., the U.S., and others are for it, but their opponents supposedly balked at the idea. “There was always this cultural thing: Women don’t fight, they’re camp followers, they do the cooking,” Birkin says. "I don’t know if they’re more worried about the shame of losing to a woman or whether it’s just different levels of violence.”

Sinou agrees, and reveals that the organizers finally agreed to allow one woman from each country, a paltry concession. The new IMCF tournaments will have a host of fight types available to women, and it’s a fast-growing demographic. In fairness, the HMBIA has also changed its tune and relaxed its rules, and the cover story for the latest Bohurt magazine, publication of choice for discerning HMB fighters, is titled "Women in Battle."

Many of the people I speak to list a litany of issues behind the rift, and each has a different straw that did break the camel’s back. However, the most frequently cited affront occurred at the last Battle of the Nations in May: During an epic struggle between Russia and the U.S., somebody reached through the fence and held up a Russian fighter by the belt to avoid him hitting the floor and losing the match. This would be bad enough for the honorable onlooking knights if it weren’t for the fact that the perpetrator was none other than Anton Trubnikov, captain of the Ukraine team, who subsequently denied the incident happened despite photographic evidence to the contrary.

Nations were up in arms, figuratively this time, settling scores on Facebook. As a final split became inevitable, Trubnikov began, in Andre Sinou from the U.S. team’s words, “a negative PR thing against the U.S., Poland, and Germany,” or as Birkin has it, “a dissemination campaign.” Spend a few minutes online and it becomes clear the war is being fought on numerous fronts.

However, this renewed aggression from the East has done nothing to quell the exodus. Fifteen countries instantly signed the new accord and Battle Heritage GB voted 36 to 4 to go with the new organization during their meeting. Fourteen of the 17 U.K. fighters who attended BOTN last year have split and are involved in the IMCF, while the former captain has remained to build a new crew.

Two more annual tournaments, in Bernau and Montbazon in Germany and France respectively, have pledged allegiance to IMCF. Of the teams that attended BOTN last year, only “Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Israel, Australia, and maybe New Zealand are sending fighters of last year’s caliber,” Birkin says. He’s mostly concerned for the safety of any new teams that are formed to fight at BOTN, arguing that they’re being cobbled together at the last minute with insufficient training. (A spokesman for Battle of the Nations U.K. Federation responds: "We have one of the U.K.'s premier combat and fitness experts, Mick Coup, training our fighters and advising on technique.")

HMBIA top brass have since issued a statement entitled "Make HMB Not Rumors," which laments these “unhealthy changes in our information sphere” and attacks the West’s “chaotic emissions of information, provocations [and] publicly boasting boycotts … which completely contradicts the SPORTS spirit.” It also claims that their finances are audited by Kaiser Partner.

The diatribe ends with a postscript: “We can only guess how much negativity and pseudo-constructive criticism can appear in the comments for this article as some people try to turn their computer keyboard into a new battlefield.” There are no comments under the article.