GENEVA — The International Grappling Athletics Federation (IGAF) announced Tuesday that all athletes competing outside their country of citizenship will now be subject to a 25% surcharge on registration fees, a measure the organization says is necessary to cover “operational costs, infrastructure investment, and the emotional labor of formatting brackets in multiple languages.”
The surcharge, which applies to every weight class from roosterweight through ultra-heavy, was initially celebrated by domestic competitors across Europe and North America who believed it would thin the field of foreign talent.
It did not.
At this past weekend’s IGAF Continental Open in Zurich, the same three athletes from Sao Paulo who have occupied the top three podium spots in every division for the past six years showed up, paid the surcharge without comment, and proceeded to submit the entire bracket by the second round.
The surcharge generated approximately $340,000 in additional revenue for the federation. Zero domestic medals were affected, because zero domestic medals existed in the first place.
“We were really hoping the pricing would level the playing field,” said one American competitor who asked to remain anonymous because he was recently promoted and didn’t want anyone to Google his competition record. “I paid $85 to register. They paid $106.25. Didn’t seem to bother them when they were ankle-locking me in forty seconds.”
IGAF president Werner Kleinhoff defended the policy in a prepared statement that was somehow both three pages long and devoid of content. “This surcharge reflects our commitment to the growth and sustainability of grappling at all levels,” it read, before pivoting to a paragraph about carbon-neutral medal production.
One of the three dominant competitors reportedly addressed the surcharge situation during a post-match interview, stating simply: “Twenty-five percent of nothing is still nothing. The registration is cheap. The plane ticket is expensive. None of this matters. We came to compete.”
He then submitted the interviewer. (This detail could not be independently verified, but multiple witnesses described a brief exchange that ended with the interviewer tapping to a wristlock while still holding a microphone.)
Domestic athletes have since launched an online petition demanding the surcharge be increased to 50%, apparently operating under the assumption that there exists a dollar amount at which a world-class grappler decides a continental title isn’t worth it.
The petition has 2,300 signatures. The three competitors from Sao Paulo have 47 gold medals between them this season alone.
IGAF’s next event, the Nordic Invitational, has already pre-engraved the podium nameplates. They are, sources confirm, in Portuguese.