After several years, Italy finally came back to the stage with Fight For Flair. On the 16th and 17th of January, Blume Lounge, a cocktail bar in the centre of Rome, hosted the first phase of the 2024 Grand Slam.
The competition was exhilarating as 33 contestants performed to the sound of bottles, coming from all over the world, such as Argentina, Peru, Czech Republic, Georgia, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, and Italy.
Entitled Fight for Flair, the name reflects the theme of the competition; a boxing match. All the contestants faced each other through a battle of stalls on their fists.
The competition was live-streamed on Twitch on both days and more than 20,000 people tuned in to watch.
The jury was made up of three world champions in the Flair Bartending sport: Luca Valentin, Silvia Daniela Istrate and Giorgio Chiarello.
Despite the skill level of all contestants being extremely high, the nominated winner was Alexander Shtifanov, who had been off-stage from Flair Bartending for four years. The second on the podium was Deniss Trifanovs, and the third spot was awarded to Roman Zapata.
We would like to thank all the sponsors that supported this event, making this Grand Slam edition 2024 incredibly special: Kidia, ODK, RedBull, Perrier, Dolomiti Ice, Miscelando in Italia, Blume, Nordes Gin, Pernod Ricard.
We really hope to have fulfilled the expectations of all our competitors and the audience, (and maybe even exceeded them!).
It has been a pleasure to organise and contribute to this event, and we wish we’ll be given this opportunity again next year, to host the new edition of Grand Slam 2025.
