Marcus Hartwell, a 26-year-old freestyle wrestler from Bozeman, Montana, signed a five-year exclusive contract with the International Grappling Alliance on Monday and immediately announced challenges to two world champions—neither of whom compete in his weight class, federation, or geographic region. The press release, posted at 11:47 a.m. MT to IGA’s Instagram and an unclaimed Twitter account, names Ernesto Garcia, the 175-pound no-gi submission wrestling champion of the European Combat Coalition, and David Park, the 145-pound gi champion of the Asian Grappling Confederation. Hartwell, who won silver at the 2023 U.S. Olympic Trials and has exactly zero professional grappling matches, weighs 179 pounds and trained jiu-jitsu for three months. The announcement was made without prior consultation with either champion, both federations, or the IGA’s event coordination department, which discovered the challenges 40 minutes after journalists began texting asking when and where the fights would happen.
Marcus’s agent, Derek Chisom, hadn’t represented a grappler before—he handled furniture out of a WeWork in Scottsdale. He was unavailable for comment because he’d already moved on to pitching his client to a third grappling promotion and a crypto exchange ‘building the future of combat sports.’
“We’re thrilled Marcus is pushing for big fights,” said IGA President Patricia Welles at a hastily scheduled press conference. “That said, Ernesto trains exclusively in Berlin and competes under ECC rules, which are different. David is in Singapore. Marcus doesn’t have a gi. Two of the three people involved in this announcement are unaware that Marcus issued a challenge to them.”
When asked if the IGA would facilitate the matches, Welles paused, checked her email, and said, “We will explore all options, including the option of not doing this.”
Hartwell’s contract specifies that he will compete at 185 pounds in the IGA’s heavyweight division, in North America only, under no-gi rules. Garcia competes at 175 pounds under ECC rules, which allow heel hooks from the knees—an illegal move in IGA regulations. Park competes in a 145-pound gi division and, according to his verified Instagram, hasn’t competed in no-gi competition since 2019.
Matching any of these three against Hartwell would require abandoning the weight classes, changing the rule sets, relocating the competition, or simply accepting that none of this’d ever happen.
“These are just technical details,” Hartwell said in a follow-up Instagram Story. “The fans want to see the best face the best. That’s me vs. them. Probably. Or one of them. The third one might be negotiable.”
Ernesto Garcia’s response came via WhatsApp message relayed through his sister-in-law: “Who is this?” His promotion, the ECC, issued a formal statement: “The ECC is aware of a competitor named Marcus Hartwell from a different promotion challenging our champion to a match under rules and weight classes we do not recognize, in a federation he does not represent, on a continent he does not train on. We will not be participating, but we appreciate the creative marketing.”
The Asian Grappling Confederation didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, but David Park posted a TikTok of himself laughing for four seconds, followed by a slide reading “Guys, I have no idea who this is.” His last Instagram post from 2019 showed him teaching a gi class to four teenagers in a strip mall in Singapore. Park has since retired from competition, begun a carpet cleaning business, and changed his name legally to “David Park” (his legal name was already David Park, but he felt the emphasis was necessary).
The IGA, sensing an opportunity for publicity, announced that it would begin “exploratory discussions” about hosting the Hartwell vs. Garcia match “pending clarification of his vision and establishment of a coherent rule set.” Simultaneously, Derek Chisom began reaching out to a fourth promotion to offer Hartwell an even more lucrative deal involving a challenge to the heavyweight champion of professional arm wrestling. “We’re looking for a fighter who can win in multiple disciplines,” Chisom told an SWE representative who hadn’t yet hung up. “Marcus is a freestyle wrestler. He could freestyle fight. He could fight while free. The possibilities are endless.”
Hartwell’s training camp, located above a Panera Bread in Boulder, Colorado, released a detailed schedule showing preparation for all three matches simultaneously: morning wrestling sessions against college wrestlers he called to ask for favors, midday strength training, evening jiu-jitsu classes where he consistently taps to blue belts, and weekend “strategy sessions for fighting a man who might not actually fight.”
He has already designed mock fight posters featuring himself, Garcia, and Park in action poses, none of which are from actual fights. Two are from meme accounts. One is from a CrossFit commercial.
“I have the wrestling foundation that these grappling guys don’t have,” Hartwell said during a recorded training video where a 58-year-old purple belt named Susan immediately passed him. “Once I understand the rules of their specific competition, their weight class, their federation, and presumably their time zone, I will demolish them. Probably not all three. Maybe two. One of them for sure.”
He hasn’t specified which one, and several sources close to Hartwell say he cannot point to their locations on a map.
The contracts remain unsigned by the other two champions. The IGA hasn’t scheduled any of the matches. The ECC’s declined to acknowledge the challenge exists beyond that single formal statement. The AGC hasn’t responded to anything. Derek Chisom has moved on to pitching Hartwell’s narrative to Netflix as a documentary series called “The Impossible Match.”
Marcus Hartwell continues posting training updates to an account with 800 followers, 500 of whom are his mother’s friends and one bot. The first match is scheduled for “sometime in the future,” according to the IGA’s Instagram story that was deleted six minutes after publication, then reposted with the date changed to “TBD.” The second match is “under review.” The third match doesn’t have a timeline because nobody involved has even agreed to participate, and besides, David Park’s carpet cleaning business is booked through September.