US Grappling - Greensboro Submission Only Tournament Report

Edit: Fixed the broken videos. Stupid embedding error.


As usual the US Grappling crew was excellent, the tournament was well run and efficient, the venue was clean and spacious, and the officiating was wonderful. I have never had cause to complain about a US Grappling tournament and this one continued that trend. I was on the mats by 11 and even sticking around to help pack up after the competition we were gone by 8.




One strange thing about this competition was the INSANE quantity of wristlock attempts. I had to fend off no fewer than 8 wristlock attempts, and at least four matches I saw were decided by wristlock. Insanity.





By the numbers:


Gi divisions: Total Matches - 6, total mat time - ~35 minutes. Matches won - 1, Matches lost - 5.

 No-Gi Divisions: Total Matches - 5, total mat time - ~27. Matches won -1, Matches lost - 4.

Average Match time: 5:45

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Things I was happy about:
I attempted a bunch of tomoe nage's this tournament and several of them were at least partially successful and one was spectacularly successful. I'm going to continue practicing it going forward. I'm able to set up my grips and execute a lot faster now that I have been previously, but I'm having some trouble with my follow through and making sure I secure top position.

I did not get swept by deep halfguard a single time. Not once.

I had far fewer stupid noob type mistakes this time than last time.

It took Matt Moretz longer than 15 seconds to beat me.

Overall I felt significantly improved between my last competition and this one.






Thngs I was NOT happy about: I felt WEAK. Even against the guys in my weight class I felt like I was struggling just to maintain position against my opponents strength. If I'm going to be serious about competing then I need to hit the weights AND make it to class more often.


My halfguard is still shaky and needs more work against heavy top pressure.


My positional aggression is still too lazy. Especially when I partially hit a sweep. I'm not fighting hard enough to get and keep top position.


Videos:


Match 1 - Part 1

I caught an accidental headbutt and we paused for a minute while we stopped the bleeding.


Part 2

Match 2 -


Ok, so this match was AWESOME, and I was SO disappointed that we only rolled for 3 minutes. It was incredibly fun and my opponent, Joseph Lee, is a very cool guy and extremely nice. I'm hoping to roll with him again some time in the future.








Match 3

Match 4

Match 5

At this point my camera battery gave out. So the remaining matches I didn't get on film. I think some of my opponents might have video, and if so I'll get the footage and get it linked up here. Mostly this is just me defending a LOT, so criticism is welcome.