This was my first competition in about fours years (thanks Covid), and first ever at brown belt. I joined the ≤182 Masters 1 bracket, which had five of us in total. There was a bit of drama in our bracket, but I’m going to try and keep this objective for educational purposes. Shout out to Jean-Jacques Machado black belt Alejandro Perez, who cornered me for these fights and tried his best to get me to gold.
This analysis is as much for my own reflection as it is for you to dissect if you so chose. I’ve added links to instructional videos on many of the techniques used in this competition, so take advantage.
VS. Roy Palacios
My first match was against Roy Palacios, and things went about as well as I could have hoped. I got an early guard pull and broke him down into Rubber Guard for most of the match. He postured up a few times, but ultimately I kept him in my world and isolated his arm after about a minute for the tap
Because of the camera angle, a lot of the minutia is lost, unfortunately. Things went well, but there’s always room for improvement. At 0:47 my Dead Orchard attempt fails and he shoots for a knee cut pass. I recover my guard quickly, but should have never given him the room to slide his knee in to begin with. Then I re-establish a high guard and transition to the arm bar for the win.
After the match he was a good sportsman. We chatted and I admired his sick tattoos.
On to the next match.
VS. Ryan Ruiz
This match was a bit more complicated.
He beat me on points, 9-0, and let me just say this guy must have titanium legs because I put everything I had into those leg locks and he would not tap. I even heard his leg pop at one point, and he was cool as a cucumber. I’m not sure if he was limping the next day, but in the match he played it off very stoic.
Things start off with a beautiful double leg takedown from Ryan that puts me into guard. This is how most of my fights go, so I wasn’t too worried about the two points at this time. About a minute in, I have an omoplata attempt, but Ryan does a good job of posturing up and never letting me break him down. I should have put more focus on keeping his head down by grabbing his collar.
As the submission attempt goes sideways, I get lucky and turn it into a sweep. You can hear my coach shouting for me to stabilize because had I locked Ryan down I could have earned points for the sweep and tied the match. Unfortunately I either couldn’t hear or didn’t listen, and no points are awarded. Oops.
We quickly transition to a straight ankle lock attempt by me, which I hold for roughly the next few minutes, sprinkling in a lazy toe-hold attempt at 2:05 and a knee bar attempt immediately after. Honestly, I felt the knee bar was tight and bullied his ankle for several minutes like it owed me money, but Ryan wasn’t having it.
I felt that technically my ankle lock attempt was quite sound. An improvement I could have made was to roll to my side so I had more room to extend his foot, but he did a good job of turning his leg to the outside to prevent me from doing this.
If heel hooks were allowed, that defense would have put him in a lot of trouble, but since they weren’t he had a great tool to stop my attacks.
At several points during the fight both coaches warned me of reaping the knee. At least two of those times Ryan pushed my foot across his thigh. I’m not sure if that was because he knew he could turn his heel out and rotate away from the ankle lock or if he was trying to get me penalized.
The ref didn’t call my foot placement out initially, but after some pressure from the coaches (including mine) he bends down to tell me to watch my foot. I’ll have to double check with some other coaches, but I felt that because my foot was elevated toward his chest I wasn’t reaping.
Typically when the heel crosses the center line of the thigh below the hip is when you get called out for reaping because it can put too much pressure on the knee, but with my foot across his center line above the hip he wasn’t actually in any danger.
I’m happy to be corrected on this though, if I misunderstand the position.
I continue to bully his leg until 3:20 where he escapes and we transition into my Possum Guard (bottom side kesa gatame). I had his arm tied up in a kimura, but his shoulder must be made of the same titanium as his legs because again, he wouldn’t tap.
He escapes that, then goes for my back. My coach knows I’m in trouble and tries to get me some points, but I completely gassed out. Embarrassing, I know. Everything I had went into attacking Ryan’s leg, and with my energy spent he gets a guard pass and mount for an easy 7 points, bringing him up to 9 for the match.
From the mount he transitions to a pretty devastating arm bar that had my elbow sore for about a week. I narrowly escape and transition to Possum Guard once more. I have his elbow isolated and am about to throw another kimura attempt. Unfortunately, the ref stops us and we’re forced to reset in the middle, at which time my control of Ryan’s elbow is lost.
Ryan won the match with 9 points and moved on to the finals because of a first round bye. The dude was tough as nails and despite my relentless attacks for the first 3/4ths of the match stayed cool and controlled the whole time.
Final Results
My third match was a gentleman’s agreement with a fellow team mate, resulting in a bronze medal for my efforts.
The Jean-Jacques Machado team did very well, with six gold medals, one silver, and 4 bronze as a whole.
Overall it was a good experience coming back to competition, with plenty of room for me to improve next time.
My Closing Thoughts
In my second fight I got tunnel vision. I always want to finish my matches via submission, and often throw away points as a result. I’ve never liked the point system, but if I’m going to compete in events that use it I better be prepared to play ball.
I felt that I maintained decent control of Ryan during my second fight until I gassed out, at which time everything fell apart. I should have been smarter about energy conservation and made better adjustments to my submission attempts so I didn’t waste energy on something that wasn’t working.
While improving my cardio for next time will help (more cardio is always better) I think my execution could be improved to side-step the cardio issue in the first place.
Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something!
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