My Ohio Grappling Challenge Results

[Jon Watkins]

Ya the turn out was BEAST!!!! In other news, I'm having trouble uploading the videos from this computer to Youtube, I guess I'll have to hit up one of my tech friends tomorrow.

[Jon Watkins]

Here's the first match. I got a bye and was already in the second round so the guy I'm up against already fought a 5 minute war, but he's a Jorge Gurgel student so he should already have that confidence against me. Plus I rode 200+ miles to get there and waited for about 4-5 hours just for this momment so give me a little credit here.

Here's my first shot at the champ, all things considered I think I did alright. If that boy woulda went for some subs, I think the match would have been a little more interesting. It also would have been nice to hear sensei's coaching. All I heard was my mom saying, get him buddy mixed with go for the butterfly sweep and some other garbled confusion, but oh well.



Here's the one for the bronze. My only regret on this one is that I didn't go for the dude's back and instead went for the Fujiwara armbar. I was too gased to pull off that armbar even though it's my favorite and it would have been much smarter to semi cradle him like Roger did on Kevin Randleman to break his arm loose and take his back for the points, but I'll keep this in mind next time for sure.




Here's my last match against the champ again. Check out my awesome Gameness Vale Tudo shorts!!! I had a shot at the Meathook to the triangle, but sensei said I needed to control his wrist lower, and also I guess I should consider it a victory that I could put him in guard to begin with...actually nobody gi or nogi could even score on this guy. I talked to him before our second match and he said he wrestled his way through 4 years of college. You'll actually see him go for a few subs in this match so you can get a better idea of my defense. I actually laughed at him while he was trying neck crank me in scarf. I aint tapping to that crap. My neck has endured alot stronger punishment from Ben Oetting in training. But the main source of accomplishment I'll take away from this match is that nobody else in the whole division could replace guard on this machine so I'm going to take that confidence into Arnolds in March!!!

[Jon Watkins]

Bring on the constructive criticism!!!

[Jon Watkins]

Bump

[Ehsan_Karam]

On the last vid starting @ about :54 you gotta learn to watch for what I call the "greedy mount" wrestlers are notorious for this, they don't really set up the mount they just kind of step over. I've gotten really good at catching them in half guard as they step over. Or you can elbow escape against the other leg which you did beautifully. But from there (and this is where the one angle the video offers is going to be a detriment to how much help we can really offer also obviously I wasn't under there feeling what you were feeling but n e hoo) I can't see what you were doing, it looked like you were reaching down doing something with your hands instead of grabbing a lockdown or at least securing an underhook. fast forward to like 1:36 when he starts to lock up a choke, it looks like you could have gone to your back and wound up bottom half again but instead you turned to your stomach which was probably a bad call. @ about 2:30 you're mounted again and it looks like your default escape from mount is trying to trap a post and bridge/roll this will work from time to time if you're explosive enough but against bigger or more technical guys it's SUUUPER low percentage. I would really invest some time drilling elbow escape until it's instinct, the SECOND you're mounted you should be moving those hips(it's very easy to escape mount if you move immediately, if you sit there for literally one second and let the guy secure the mount it becomes an entirely different story). @ 3:03 you had a shot to hit the half an half from that dogfight which is my favorite fucking sweep(combo'd with plan b) so that might be worth a look. Other than that you got your guard and did your thing maybe a little mission control action? Wrestlers are hard to control posture wise so I really like to go to mission control to tire em out a little and then personally as goofy as it sounds I usually bail out of guard and use half guard to sweep em and get on top. wrestlers like to be in top guard because they can hunker down over your hips and control you from there they have excellent base and are hard as shit to sweep, Ive noticed that from a correct bottom half guard position where they're not directly over you they are much less effective. like I said half and half/ Plan B all day man. hope that helps.

[Jon Watkins]

Now that's what I'm talking about!!! You actually went a little beyond some of my own considerations with your analysis. Thanks man!!! I guess I felt a little discouraged going for the dogfight after the way he shut my half guard game down in the gi, but that's really more my A game than my full guard stuff and it would have been awesome to score on a guy like that so you're probably spot on in your feedback. Thanks again buddy!!!

[Ehsan_Karam]

Glad I could help sir.

[Brandon Jeffries]

Use this to take his back next time. It works well

[Brandon Jeffries]

I like these too. Always good to have a few options.

[Jon Watkins]

Wow. Those are pretty awesome and simple at the same time. Thanks Brandon!!!

I especially like the one that looks a little like a Def con 4 Twister.