Polaris Squads is finally starting to take shape after first being teased only a few weeks ago, with the latest announcement of the first competitor for Team Europe, Marcin Held. The revelation comes courtesy of Bloody Elbow who were able to identify the fourth man competing at the event, out of a total of sixteen across both teams. Held is a very experienced grappler who became Poland’s youngest black belt at the age of 21 and has featured on Polaris as far back as their sixth event. He was competing in grappling less frequently for a while as he focused more on his MMA career but the Bellator and UFC veteran has been making a resurgence on the professional grappling scene over the last few years.
The Polaris Squads ruleset announcement outlined that both Team Europe and Team UK will field four -75kg competitors and four -95kg competitors. Seeing as Marcin Held has competed at Lightweight throughout his MMA career and has never competed higher than 77kg in grappling, he seems certain to be part of the lighter weightclass. As such, he will stand on equal footing with the first two lighter competitors announced for Team UK, Polaris Double Champion Ashley Williams and returning Polaris competitor Jed Hue.
The only other member of Team UK that is known at the moment is another Polaris veteran and one of the competitors at the Polaris UK Grand Prix, Bradley Hill. It shouldn’t take long before the remaining members of both Team UK and Team Europe are announced as the event takes place in less than a month and there are twelve athletes left to be revealed.
The full event will be streamed live on 27th September on UFC FightPass, click here to subscribe and watch.
