1st BJJ Tournament

Happy New Year!

Cleaning up things I have been meaning to do from last year, here is a post about the first BJJ tournament I competed in. 

On Sunday 31st August I competed in my first BJJ comp, entering in the 85-91kg white belt division and the open weight white belt, both with gi's.  For those who dont know BJJ progresses through the ranks slowly and a person will usually be a white belt for 2-3 years. 90% of the competitors were White Belt, which is normal for Australia, for which BJJ is comparatively new. There was also no-gi competitions, but since I have never done no-gi before (and I was exhausted) I didnt enter them.

 

Although I dropped from about 101kg to about 92kg after starting BJJ, making weight was still a bit daunting, especially since I havent done it before. I got some dietary advice from a rower friend of mine at work, especially since I had put on muscle to be about 93. I did a couple of 10km runs (I had bever run that far before!) and was well on track, and was on weight on the Tuesday before the match. On Thurday I asked my 'dietary consultant' if I was allowed to eat sushi at a seminar we were at, and got the OK, and promptly gorged myself (its healthy, right?). On Friday morning I was suddenly 1 1/2 kg overweight!!! (It was probably the sodium in the soy sauce). I was placed on power bars and sustagen until weigh in... :-(

 

Power bars suck for a number of reasons. Firstly at $5+ each they are an overly expensive way of eating. Secondly, some of them taste so bad I wouldnt feed them to my dog. Fortunately I dropped 2 1/2 kg in 36 hrs (without doing any exercise) and could relax on my diet a bit, making weight with about 200g to spare.

 

In my first match in my weight division I grabbed the opponents gi and 'pulled guard' (wrapping my legs around his torso) and took him down into guard.  I attacked with arm bars, triangles and then finally got a cross collar chooke happening and he tapped out. (i.e. I won)

 

I moved to the next round, and I cant remember how we got to the ground, but once again I had the opponent in guard. He tried to 'stack' me several times, but I stretched out and avoided it. He was attacking with a very simple one handed lapel choke, but as his arms were as long (maybe longer?) than mine it was quite effective. I had him with a cross collar choke for a while (and he told me after the match I was very close to getting him out...) but eventually he submitted me. (Cant quite remember how though...probably the choke?) I tried to armbar his hand choking arm (it was set up for it) but couldnt pull it off properly as he applied alot of strengh against it and I dont have the technique yet to beat that. Overall it was an very even match.

 

In my weight division I came 4th.

 

In the open division I got to watch my opponent compete in another match, and he had a really good stand up game (and ground game, but I wanted to know how to start first, and wanted to get into a good position). His low posture meant I couldnt pull guard, and my handfull of throws probably wouldnt work either. So I tried for a double shoot to the legs. I had done a little practice on this the day before, but he avoided it and got me in side control. I managed to get out of an Americana lock and some chokes, but couldnt get out of his really tight moves. Then he got mount and it was pretty much over, him finishing me with a choke.

 

He pretty much owned me, but he also 'owned' everyone else as well, winning the open weight (even dispatching a fantastic fighter from our team, Remo, at a later round), so that makes me feel a bit better.

 

Two of my friends from karate, Renee and Jon were at the tournament and videod my pwning but not my earlier win - how unfortunate! However it is good to be able to review something so that I can learn from it. For everyone else, it is probably pretty funny to see me get pwned.

There were 96 fighters overall, for 156 matches, and many fighters were from interstate (which was great to gain exposure to different peoples approaches to BJJ). There was a really relaxed and friendly bunch of competitors which made it a real pleasure to participate.