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Grappling Dummies BJJ TV: No Gi British Open 2009 from martial farts on Vimeo. Team Scramble’s little sojourn to Birmingham for the No Gi British Open. You can see: Courtesy of my new Flickr account. I won’t bother describing the whole weekend as I will be uploading a video showing the adventure later on. This is about the BJJ!  Team Scramble! First up was Andy, who’s been training MMA for a while, and grappling only a few months. My advice to him was to “be first”, knowing that the person who initiates or completes the first takedown has a huge psychological (and points) advantage. Andy pressed the action straightaway and had his opponent on the back foot. They scrambled for a while and eventually hit the floor. I can’t quite remember exactly what happened but Andy ended up fighting to keep the guy from taking his back. In a moment of clarity, as the guy started sinking in an armbar, I yelled to Andy “Step over his head with your left leg!” at the top of my voice. Andy heard, pointed to his right leg, I shook my head, he pointed to his left, I nodded, he stepped over and saved himself from the armbar. Awesome! After that, Andy passed the guys guard and had a good grip for side control. He held it for one… two… thr— the guy started wriggling and… no points! What?! The match was over with Andy losing to two advantages. Points really could have been awarded for Andy’s guard pass but hey ho, that’s the way it goes. He put in a sterling effort for his first competition, and on such a big stage, too. A couple of hours later I was up. I had purposefully changed my plan of attack for this. I am tired of being a BJJ guy who pulls guard or drops down like an octopus with a hangover, and had been practicing my shots. I did shoot. It felt good, but looking at the video it was pretty lame. Still, at least I have a shot to call lame now. My little shot, that I will pet and groom and feed until it gets big and strong. Anyway, my opponent, Aaron, was kind of pulling guard at the time so an easy two points for me. He had a tricky guard and although I felt strong pinning his arms and standing up to try to break it, it wasn’t happening. I fended off a couple of triangle attempts and found myself in an armbar. Aaron spun to sink it in, then I felt the pressure suddenly ease off so I followed him to the ground and passed his guard. Then I realised the ref was tapping me and everyone was shouting. I think the fact that just about every official there was from Braulio’s (my opponent’s) team meant they were a teensy bit eager to call the match. I was honestly flummoxed as I had not even started to tap. Luckily they recognised it and allowed the fight to continue. Then I got triangled. Balls! Aaron was good; his triangle just crept up on me and before I knew it I was seeing stars. (He went on to win the gold via triangle too, so that’s good.)  Aaron and some butt face. After the fight he told me he read my blog, which was cool. Interestingly he had seen my videos and noticed that I liked to play guard a lot, which is why he had pulled guard himself. And I had surprised him with the takedown! That tickled me. The judge told me straight away I would be fighting again for third place, which was a good consolation. I really wanted third place. I had about 20 minutes or something, and then fought again. Same deal, shot for the takedown, ended up on top. He had some deep hooks but I defended the sweep pretty well. I put my head down for the Arimaki pass, usually a staunch and reliable soldier in my arsenal. However, I didn’t tuck my head in enough and presented my pencil neck for him to wrench off, which he dutifully did. It’s still sore now. So, two fights and two losses. Bums. There was plenty of good news though. The fights were fun, and I didn’t get slaughtered. I learnt two very important lessons. 1) If you feel a triangle creeping up, do something about it. 2) Tuck the head in during the Aramaki pass. I didn’t feel out of my depth at all, which was different to my first comp at blue belt. I was pleased about that. I felt physically strong enough to compete at the same level as my opponents which was also a good feeling. We hung out most of the day with John from Art of Jits, who’s acquaintance I’m very happy to have made. I met another guy, Daire Darragh (hello Daire Darragh) who confessed to being a reader of my blog. And I sold a couple of magazines.  LOOK AT THE LOVELY MAGAZINEY YUM YUMS I had a little chat with Roger Gracie, with Braulio, with Lagarto, with Nick Brooks, and generally hob nobbed with the very likeable British BJJ crowd. There were some excellent fights, with Nick Gregoriades competing against Luciano Cristovam (I may have totally butchered those two names… oops.) at the Elite class, and some guys from London Fight Factory absolutely cleaning up a whole bunch of divisions. Two of their fighters fought each other in the final and put in a very acrobatic display of awesomess.  Flying sockbar
Look out for the video soon!  Lots of peoples. 1) I’ve worked out a deal whereby you will be able to buy BJJ Spirits, Grappling Spirits, Paraestra Instructionals and Robert Drsydale’s book at the official shop on the day so please look out for them. This is the only place in the UK where you will be able to get your hands on them, and I even have the latest issue (6) which has only been on sale for a few weeks in Japan.  BJJ Spirits 6 2) If you see me or any of my guys, please come and say hello! Especially if you own a blog (but not exclusively) and we can do some kind of joint blogalising mega explosion.  Mati, Andy, Ben, Jeff and some moron So, the day approaches. In the end, it’s only me and Andy competing with A coming up for moral support. Andy should do well. He’s competing in the beginner’s category, but he is strong and fast and determined. It depends on who he comes up against but he should have a good showing. Hope there aren’t any blue belt sandbaggers in there. I’ll be in the advanced division and I think it will be tough but that is fine. I am very prepared for a battle. I look forward to it. I don’t want any easy fights; I’d rather lose to a good opponent than get a cheap win. Fortunately at this level (purple belt) everybody is tough. Although I haven’t been training regularly at a proper school. I have been training fairly well. I’d like to give a massive thanks to Jeff Lawson who has been rolling with me a little bit in preparation. Jeff is like a jiu jitsu calculating machine… input some limbs and a position, and beep beep beep he spits out a painful submission every time. I received a package stuffed full of top secret jiu jitsuey stuff today. I am now carrying around a towel as every time I think about it as drool gushes forth uncontrollably. All will be revealed, probably in December, so watch this space. We leave for Birmingham on Saturday and stay overnight, then compete on Sunday. Most likely we will be sleeping in the kind of flea-bitten vomit-encrusted hovel that would make a tramp quiver in fear, so that’ll be good. Bye! Hello! Enjoy a happy social network for maximum times and stylish jiu jitsu life! Here is a video I knocked together of my trip to London to interview Braulio. You don’t get the actual interview unfortunately. That might turn up transcribed later if Gong Kaku agree. This is more of a proof to my future self; “I actually did it.” Enjoy! Grappling Dummies BJJ TV: Braulio Estima Interview from martial farts on Vimeo. Yay! The return of Grappling Dummies. Nothing special, just a little video of when I went up to London to meet Braulio Estima, ADCC 2009 Double Champion, to interview him for Gong Kaku. Enjoy! Music is Creative Commons licensed: Black is the Night by Scott Altham http://ccmixter.org/files/scottaltham/14312 I haven’t quite grasped the meaning yet but a couple of girls do some jiu jitsu. Edit: Just watched it all the way through. They are local radio presenters whose special guest next week is Aoki Shinya! So I suppose they wanted to go and do some BJJ for background. Good on them! おもしろい！ Our sweaty little mats were graced by Jeff Lawson today!  Mati, Andy, Ben, Jeff and some moron I had met Jeff a couple of times and been blown away each time at just how friendly and generous he is. It seems to be a running thing actually… the harder the fighter, the more humble and down to earth they are. Luckily for me, he responded to my plea for help. I needed someone much, much better than me to rough me up a bit in preparation for the British Open in November. Jeff has offered to help me out a lot in the next couple of weeks which is excellent news. A new guy came along too, a tough Polish guy who is by all accounts a very strong fighter, and trains mostly MMA. He came along for some pure BJJ, some technical rolling. I wasn’t sure if I had anything to offer him, as he is a fighter already and a strong, tough guy, but he seemed to have a whale of a time. It probably helped that he saw Jeff there when he turned up. Feeling slightly stupid, I led a warmup and then went through the reverse triangle that Braulio had demonstrated to me on Friday night. Jeff, someone who has fought in the octagon in front of Dana White, liked the setup, which was a relief! We messed with that for a bit and then went straight into rolling. Ben and Andy were there after a bit of a layoff, too. I rolled with Jeff who, like all good grapplers, kept enough of his skill in check that we could have a good roll. Jeff and I rolled a few times, and I had some success setting up the inverse triangle which was a surprise but I couldn’t finish him of course. The new guy was very strong, very athletic, and always attacking. We had quite a balanced roll, though, and after the class he said he felt great and it was exactly what he was looking for. He’s connected to an MMA gym not far away that has no BJJ coach at the moment and it could prove to be a good contact for me. Ben was incredibly mentally tough today despite going to bed at five a.m. last night and feeling completely flat–I had a triangle, a RNC, and a few other things that I simply could not finish on him. Kudos Ben! I feel nice and beaten up now, and a few more sessions like that will put me in with a vague chance at the competition. |
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