What We Learned From Polaris 31 Squads

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Polaris came back and this time they are revisiting their squads format. However there was a twist this time. For those that aren't familiar Polaris squads is a team based event similar to quintet, except instead of single elimination with 5 people it is based upon points and goes for 90 min. This means that you get to see the grapplers more than once. Previously everything was based on submissions, so any match that didn't end in submission was labeled as a draw. This time they changed things up and instead there were decisions for each match, but submission gave your teams more points. They also divided the competitors into 2 weight classes, so you could have 3 small men and 3 large men. Anyway, now lets look at the the teams and the results.

Europe

Jozef Chen
Santeri Lilius
Paweł Jaworski
Taylor Pearman
Mateusz Szczecinski
Eoghan O’flanagan


North America

PJ Barch
Devonte Johnson
Chris Wojcik
Mike Perez
Kieran Kichuck
Julian Espinosa

Results


Team Europe def Team North America  17 - 12


Helena Crevar def Anabel Lopez Beard via dec




How People Won



This event had a 25% submission rate, which is honestly disappointing, but somewhat expected. IMO there were 2 factors here. First, the competitors were fairly even in level and size. There weren't that many mismatches, which made many of the matches close. Second, The matches were only 5 min each and the first few matches had people feeling each other out for 1-2 min, which really doesn't make sense in this format, but the athletes are used to doing. Luckily the entertainment value isn't just based on the amount of subs. 

Leg attacks came out on top here, followed by chokes and then arm locks. The shorter time (5 min) likely contributed to the lack of submissions and I hope things will improve as people get used to the format. 

Stats





 

 


The average for 2024 was 10.14 for the Action Score and 16.45 for watchability. This event exceed those and in fact had a higher watchability score than any other event last year. I think the format is what lead to this and to me that shows that the changes Polaris did moved things in the right direction. The shorter match times seem to help and in my personal opinion helps keep boring matches short. It also helps keep you from having too much of a good thing. Sometimes 15 min of wrestling is too much. 15 min of leg locks is too much, etc. However we got to see a good mix of styles and I hope the next squads event will keep this in mind when it comes to match making. 


Overall

Although there weren't as many subs as I would have liked and I was rooting for Team North America, I still thought this event was a success. It was exciting, had some quick subs, highlight reel moments and good back and forth matches. I applaud both Polaris and WNO for continuing to work to improve their products. This was a good weekend for grappling and I hope we left all the terrible matches back in 2024. So far things have been looking good and I'm excited for the next Squads event featuring the ladies. 

Year to Date Stats








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