Europe’s leading profession grappling organisation will be returning to The International Convention Centre in Newport, Wales on April 4th with a new concept, The Polaris Absolute Grand Prix! Polaris has previously arranged single-fight cards stacked with some of the best grapplers on the planet, like Craig Jones and Nick Rodriguez. They’ve also spent time helping build European fighters’ careers by giving them the platform to showcase their talents, like Ffion Davies and Ashley Williams. This time however, they’ll be inviting eight of the best grapplers available to battle it out for the tournament crown, with the added benefit of no weigh-ins to worry about.

This event marks the first departure from the traditional Fight Night format that Polaris has employed to great success previously and some of the rules that Polaris normally uses have been amended to suit the Grand Prix. The biggest change will be the length of each match, as they will be ten minutes instead of the regular fifteen that Polaris uses for main card fights. This is in order to prevent fatigue in the athletes making it to the finals.

Polaris fights are also normally judged without points, by splitting the fight into three equal segments and judging the winner of each one individually, the athlete who wins two out of three being declared the victor. For the Polaris Absolute Grand Prix however, they’ll be using a simplified points system in order to keep the action moving.

While there’s no entrants listed so far, Polaris has often featured fighters who would no doubt love to compete in an event like this. The aforementioned Nick Rodriguez and Craig Jones have both competed on Polaris numerous times, Kaynan Duarte is always eager to compete in tournament formats and Freddy Vosgrone is a criminally-underrated Polaris favorite who would be a fantastic dark horse addition to the competitor list.

For tickets to the live event at The International Convention Centre in Newport, Wales on April 4th, click here.