At Medieval Combat USA, we're excited to kick off elections for regional representative positions. These individuals will assist in coordinating with Buhurt International and managing all domestic operations.
See nominees below!
East
Mike Guiliani
My name is Mike Guiliani, and I am running for the position of Regional Representative for the East. I am a newer fighter at just over two years in the sport, but I have been lucky enough to see some of the best parts of the sport and travel overseas as part of Team USA.
As a regional representative, I will do my part to be an active community member focusing on building the growth and experience of fighters and teams in the East. My goal is to increase the standard in which events are held, with more frequent marshall accreditation and local events available to all teams, while providing the tools necessary for that to all. By increasing the number and level of marshalls and the number of locally run events, we can also increase the ability of our fighters to a new higher level and allow our teams to promote themselves independently. I intend to hold an open door policy for all members of the community, with a promise that any issue I cannot solve immediately will be brought to a higher power and kept track of until it is resolved. I will frequently contact captains, marshalls, and fighters in the East to get a read on the current steelfighting climate and work with you to improve any deficiencies or shortcomings they feel need shoring up. I can't promise a revolutionary and groundbreaking change overnight, but I can promise we will work together to improve the sport for everyone.
Cade Mclarty
Hello! My names Cade McLarty! I’m currently the captain of the Cincinnati Barbarians, and have been involved in the sport for close to 4 years now.
My main goal if elected is to help clubs in my region with event organization, marketing for growth for their community, and help effectively promote a healthy and close community within there club, area, and region.
I believe I would be an effective choice for a regional representative due to my experience in community building. The Cincinnati Barbarains are a community of over 60 people fights and support. We are cohesive and close because we have put an emphasis on community development, it’s the same emphasis I would like to put on the east region. A cohesive community that works together and can grow together.
To build that community I plan on running sensing polls to see the direction that you want things to go, whether it’s MCUSA helping to get your events going or helping you recruit and support new fighters and marshals, there’s many things that I believeI can help with and without anyone hearing your voices you aren’t getting the help, and the community you deserve.
Central
Ayden Hopper
Ayden has spent the past five years fighting in the buhurt community as a fighter in melees, profights, and duels. She’s a thoughtful, organized, logistically-minded individual with a dedication to doing things right. She also has extensive experience as a marshal for both IMCF and Buhurt International tournaments, as well as being a top-tier event runner. She is extremely active in the community, having attended events in America, Mexico, Italy, Czech Republic, and England within the last year alone. Her role as regional representative will be marked by ensuring that members are heard, with clear and effective communication and transparency from the board.
Furthermore, her focus is to ensure that policies will be made with fighters in mind.
West
Jason Puerta (Jay Tesla)
I have been involved with Buhurt as a fighter, team captain, regional leader, tournament organizer for Melee and Pro-fights. These various experiences have helped me understand our community better and helped me pull in the various connections to put on great tournaments and events for our fighters.
I'm a 42-year-old father to a beautiful 8-year-old boy and a 6-year-old daughter. I've been married to my unreasonably supportive, amazing wife Marisol for 15 years. I began the sport of Buhurt Armored Combat in 2015. I made it to the USA team that went to Portugal in 2016. In 2018, I was part of the Gold Medal men's 16’s in IMCF Scotland. I was honored to participate in History Channel’s Knight Fight series, episode 3, Romans vs Barbarians. I had initial success and made it to round 2 where, after a highlight hit with a Roman shield to the back of Paul Friedel's Barbarian head, he fell on me, crushing me as time ran out.
I took over the Los Angeles Golden Knights in 2019, and we've built up a growing team of 16 aspiring fighters from all over Los Angeles. We continue to grow and welcome anyone who wants to put in the work with us.
Why do I believe I would be an effective Regional Representative for MC USA? I believe that the person best representing our community in this sport should be someone who has been a fighter and experienced what we all experience when we step into the arena. Win or lose, having that experience allows a certain credibility to anyone attempting to represent a community.
(My availability and current involvement) I'm retired. I worked for Tesla for about 10 years and had great success, enough to allow me to leave and pursue other passions. I have the time to be fully involved, along with my team captain Ronin Sato, in our team management, recruiting, team morale, and everything that comes with running a team of active fighters. We consistently run 3 practices a week to accommodate our large geographical area and schedules.
(My idea for a transportable Tabletop LIST) Through my good friendships in our community, I connected with Joel Casillas from team Ordo Draconis. He had old wooden legs that belonged to an old LIST that originally belonged to Ursus, eventually passed down to Ordo. It sat in the dry heat of Hemet CA for several years until word got around that I was looking to build a LIST for our region. I drove out the 2 hours to Hemet and borrowed a trailer from him, and after two trips, I had these red and green solid wood bean legs. Soon after, I gathered people from all over, as far away as Santa Barbara, and held a BBQ at my house. Fighters from all walks of life were there to make these wooden legs become a transportable Tabletop List. We put our heads together and created a simple, effective concept that is still in use today.
The LIST has been successfully used for:
Fresno Highland Games, coordinated with Mark Jackson
Marshall Seminar/Training with Titov, coordinated with Joseph Cadieux
Ventura Melee Mega Bowl, coordinated with Joseph Brandt
ACS National Tournament in Reno, Idyllwild CA
Hylan Western Championship
Regional Training LIST for Ordo, Golden Knights, Santa Barbara Soldados, War Pigs, San Luis Obispo Manticores
(Experience with Event creation and Execution) In addition to my experience as a fighter and actively running a team, I also have experience putting on events to give our regional fighters tournaments to work towards. I put together a two-day tournament in Idyllwild CA for both duels and Melee. I wanted to create exciting events for local fighters without the complexity of putting on melee events. I looked to the Pro Fight. I created the Golden Ring Series held in July of this year to a sold-out crowd of 200 there to see our local fighters fight in a controlled environment with an announcer, marshals, and judges. It was well organized for both the fighters and the crowds. It was a huge success; I worked closely with Joseph Cadieux and members of all the teams as far out as Vegas and Arizona. My ability to successfully bring people together for our common goals of growing the sport, along with the experiences I have just listed, show a track record of my efforts to not only build infrastructure for our fighters but organize events as well. I will continue to do so.
What ideas or improvements do you envision for our organization? And how do you plan to implement them in your region? The last few years, beginning with the Construction of the Transportable TableTop and the Idyllwild events, all coincide with my efforts of looking for ways to keep our fighters with events in between the large national events to keep our fighters sharp and effective. We currently have Golden Ring II scheduled for December 16th here in Burbank CA. We expect 300 people and have a fighter that works for Disney as a producer. We will have a pro Live Stream. Bill 'Bam Bam' Woodbury VS Spencer Waddell are the main event. I plan to continue with the large main event style for our fighters with payouts for them. In addition to that, we are developing smaller events for our newer fighters, not yet as experienced, who want to put on a longsword fight or a buckler duel. We only have 4 in the region, not enough for an official tournament, but good enough to have them fight in front of smaller crowds and still gain experience outside of regular practice. I have worked with Joseph Cadieux on a few events, and we have ideas for future duels events like the English Beach event a couple of years ago. We will likely hold another major melee event next year as we did this year. I coordinated with Joseph Brandt on that. I would like to promote more regional training opportunities; I believe that is an area we could be busier with. At the regional training events, we should also hold Marshall training to take advantage of the List and People there that may have interest. Having an experienced Marshall Class for the region should also be a top priority.
How will you engage and communicate with members in your region to ensure their voices are heard and their needs addressed? We currently have ongoing chats with team captains and chats with everyone, a regional chat, and those are ways that fighters speak up and information is distributed quickly. For a formal way to stay in touch, I would probably opt for a monthly or quarterly zoom chat with team captains to review upcoming events and make information clear and available. Information can be a bottleneck to success if not properly distributed. Updating contact information for all team representatives should be done at these meetings as a standard way to keep updated contact information.
And I would like to raise my hand and serve our West Coast community in a regional capacity, expand the quality of our events and continue to grow it as well.
Thank you for allowing me a chance to answer your questions.
Jason Puerta
Johny Porter
For nearly a decade Buhurt has been a major focus of my life, and since my second year in the sport I've had the opportunity to compete against the best fighters in the USA and the world in the toughest leagues that formed. Some highlights of my career include placing top 6 at Battle of the Nations 3 years in a row, earning the 3rd best overall fighter award in 2018 at BOTN in Italy, competing in Buhurt Prime with Cerberus, and taking gold at Buhurt Leage World Cup with Dominus. Now much of my efforts are going towards growth of the Seattle Vagabonds and the PNW region in general!
Why do you believe you would be an effective Regional Representative for MC USA?
- Along with my experience competing in the sport, I have also been directly present at or witness to many contentious, polarizing, or even scandalous events at many levels of the game. Having helped navigate through these times, it has given me a certain perspective on how to diplomatically move through sticky situations, and see that no parties are irreconcilable afterwards. Often egos clash in this arena of bureaucracy because they care about being in control more than growing the sport, that will not be the case with me.
What ideas or improvements do you envision for our organization, and how do you plan to implement them in your region?
-Two biggest things: #1 growth of softkit competitions. There is a massive amount of untapped talent in the youth and lower expendable cash bracket who never get the chance to learn or feel inhibited from fully committing because they don't see a financial or otherwise viable path to armor. We need to encourage soft kit 1v1 profights, at high intensity for adults, and establish some adapted rules for softkit melees. Some of these are already being worked on in our area.
#2 State based 12 man and 30 man teams. There are many states with enough people to make 12 or even 30 man teams, and the USA has enough fighters to field many 12 or 30 man units. We have been cross training with all teams in WA state and my goal is to one day have a PNW 30 man team. One day the US should dominate this sport at all levels, 1v1 of every category all the way to 150v150.
How will you engage and communicate with the members in your region to ensure their voices are heard and their needs are addressed?
- I am already the head of several group chats with captains of teams in WA, the PNW, and I'm in constant contact with many other members of teams on the West Coast. Buhurt is my passion, and these people are my friends. Ensuring they are treated properly is in my best interest, their counsel will be necessary to maintain fluid operations in our region.
My experiences overall are extensive. Let me pose a question to any voters: has anyone in this sport ever had beef or issues with me that have gone unaddressed? My integrity is not questionable. Overall, whoever gets the role will do amazing no doubt. So thank you again for the consideration.
Johny Porter the Vagabond
How to Vote
Voting is open to all paid members, both support staff and competitors. If you haven't received your emailed poll, reach out to us at medievalcombat-usa@gmail.com and we'll direct you to the survey!
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