Current Senior British Open champion Paul Sawyer of Bournemouth Sombo Club and Sombo UK represented Great Britain at Under 68 kilos in the Over 40 age category at the World Masters Championships held in Amyndeo, Macedonia, northern Greece. As expected there were some strong competitors vying for the masters world titles, most of them coming from Russia and the former Soviet Union countries. Even countries such as Germany, USA, Israel and hosts Greece fielded mostly former Soviet wrestlers in their line up.
Paul’s main challenge was expected to come from the former Russian national senior champion Sergei Vlasov. In the 1998 World Masters in Malta they had met in the semi final and Vlasov proved to be a comfortable winner on that occasion leaving Paul with a bronze and the Russian going on to win the final convincingly too.
Paul started this year’s competition well including taking a clear submission win from an armlock against Kernovas of France before progressing to face Vlasov once again.
Four years on and it was a much closer contest. This time Paul took great care to avoid the Russian’s devastating leg entwined Khabarelli style pickups which had proved to be his downfall in Malta. Vlasov did manage to twice turn Paul over in groundwork to apply an armlock only to be thwarted on both occasions by the British wrestler’s strong defence. Vlasov scored two points from a throw about halfway through the contest which ultimately proved to be the difference between them and thus qualified for the final which he also won to take another World Masters title and left Paul with another bronze.