June rapier rankings surge after 380 fights across four countries

Six tournaments, 380 fights and four countries fed the June 2026 Mixed and Men’s Steel Single Rapier update, and the result was a ladder that moved fast enough to punish anyone sitting still. HEMA Ratings logged 37 new fighters and three comebacks after at least two years away, a dense month of entries that made the category look less like a static ranking and more like a live circuit.

That kind of churn matters in single rapier because the field can split cleanly by local style, club depth and tournament access. HEMA Ratings, which collects results from as many HEMA tournaments as possible and turns them into performance ratings, says the June slate was wide enough to pull four countries into one update. The broader June event calendar also showed major tournaments in Melbourne, Dublin and Prague, a reminder that the month was not just busy but geographically spread out.

Bradley Cramer made the clearest leap inside that crowded field. He climbed 12 places, from 21st to 9th, with a weighted rating of 1,844, putting him inside the top 10 on a month when the rankings were already being pushed around from multiple directions. Cramer’s HEMA Ratings profile lists him with University of West Florida Fencing and the United States, and his results across weapons are not one-dimensional: as of June 2026 he was 30th in rapier and dagger, 38th in sabre, 7th in sword and buckler and 677th in longsword.

The month’s other movement was just as telling. James Eldredge debuted at 405th with a rating of 1,386.3, while Ned Brabner posted the biggest rating climb, rising from 868.5 to 1,273.6. Travis McKenzie authored the month’s biggest upset, winning a fight that carried an estimated 14.48 percent chance, the sort of result that can swing seeding and confidence in a category where a few high-value wins still matter.

At the top, Robert Childs led the June single-rapier rankings at 2,047, with Marco Luca Vulcano, Edward Craig, Daniel Pope, Gavin Page, Massimiliano Cappello, Reinis Rinka and Aleksander Dynarek packed behind him in a deep elite tier. The main island held 1,888 fighters, and compared with the related June rapier-and-dagger update, which had 245 fights from one event and 1,405 fighters on the main island, single rapier proved the busier and more volatile side of the rapier ledger. In a month like that, the ladder does not just update, it reshuffles.