The Word Wrestling Federation : Australian Team Poetry Slam Title.

The WWF Rules, Guidelines & Fine Print:

A Poetry Slam is an audience-judged performance poetry competition. The WWF is a Team Slam - this means poets compete as a team, performing a combination of solo, duo, trio or ensemble (all four team members) pieces to the audience, in a series of rounds. Judges are selected at random from the audience at the start of the competition, and judge by holding up scores after each performance. The winning team is the team with the highest score at the end of the night.

Competition Overview

The Word Wrestling Federation Title is represented by The WWF Title Belt. In 2005, the first two States to compete for The WWF Title Belt were NSW and VIC. The WWF invited teams from these two States to nominate themselves to challenge for the right to represent their State in the 2005 Title Bout (held at the Overload Poetry Festival in Melbourne in August 2005). The teams who contested the inaugural WWF Title Bout were chosen from preliminary or Challenge Bouts, held in Sydney and Melbourne in July 2005. Housecat Havoc from NSW won.
They hold the Title Belt until they are challenged, and beaten.

The Bouts

Every WWF Slam Bout (both Challenges and Title Bouts) consists of FOUR rounds, with Tie-Breaker rounds only in the event of tied score.
At the start of the Bout the MC tosses a coin to establish which team goes first in each round.
During the Bout each team of four poets performs four pieces up to three-minutes long - at least one of these must be performed by ALL FOUR poets (an ensemble piece).
The team Captains will determine the order of their teams' performances - but this does not have to be ahead of schedule. It is up to each team to plan and implement their own strategy on the night.
No props or musical/sound/vision accompaniment.

Judging
The WWF will ensure that a suitable number of judges are chosen randomly - five is ideal, but in the case of there being a small crowd three will suffice.
Before the Bout begins the judges will be chosen randomly from the audience (by door ticket or seat number).
Partners and family of the performers will be ineligible for judging.
At the end of each performance the judges hold up scorecards from 1 to 10 (including up to one decimal place.)
If using five judges (the optimal number), the lowest and highest score for each performance will not be included in the final score.
Time penalties will apply for going over three minutes: the team will lose 0.5 points from their final score for every 15 seconds (or part thereof) that they go over the time limit.
In the event of a tie between two teams each team captain will nominate a performer/group of performers to perform one more piece that is judged and scored.
The winner of the Slam is the team with the highest score at the end.