ADCC North American Trials Scott Epstein vs Bryce Shepard

[Ric]

Props to whomever filmed the match. I'm so tired of people filming matches and having the fighters be tiny little specs in the frame because the filmmaker has zoomed out instead of in. This video was zoomed in nice and tight and was very watchable.

[K Madden]

[I][I]

I normally wouldn't complain in public, but that match was ridiculous.

4 major mistakes by the referee which resulted in the loss in my opinion:

1) Three minutes in, when the points period started, the referee for some strange reason slapped Scott hard on the back instead of verbally saying "points" which is the standard in every other adcc match i've ever seen. Everyone knows that when the ref touches you you're supposed to freeze (as a precursor to moving the action back to the center of the mat) and of course Scott was super confused and let go of a vice grip which is his game.

2) You are not supposed to be allowed to run off the mat to escape a submission which the guy clearly did.

3) Once off the mat (and he was on the carpet), once the submission is let go, the action should have been stopped.

4) Let's say as a ref you missed the issues raised above in point 2 and 3, then how in the world do you let a guy go from the carpet to a mount where Scott clearly stopped rolling as the action should be done. And if you somehow let him keep going, how do you give him mount points at that time and restart? Meaning, if somehow you think the action should keep going despite the guy being completely out of bounds (to avoid the submission), then once he gets back in bounds, why stop at mount? If that's suddenly a viable mount (and it wasn't as you can see on the video) and they're back in bounds, why stop it? Because the ref was confused and slow and doesn't know what to do at that point.

I know in grappling tournaments you never know what to expect with the officials (btw, they were fine in my matches this tournament), but this one was blatantly ridiculous.

to me it looked like he was slapping the Bryce's hand away for holding Einstein's shorts? No?
I totally agree, absolute horse-shit to do that. I heard no warnings if that was the case. and with him slapping, THEN saying POINTS, thats crap.

The carpet was BS too. cant tell if he slowed because he noticed the carpet, but to me, he knew he was there and stopped pressing. i mean, im playing devils advocate here, but dont stop
now, non-devil, thats just ASKING for someone to get injured. it seemed crappy that the judge just let it go that far.
if NOTHING else, the action should have continued JUST long enough for Bryce to ESTABLISH mount, vs JUUUUST getting it, then the stoppage.

we all know we are a LIL biased, but I dont see any reason why the mount points happened like that. even if we say he DID get the mount in that .25 seconds, Scott reversed it within another .5 secs after the restart. and ive never seen mount points being given after less than 1 second. fuck, double it or triple it and you STILL dont have a case for an established mount.

and btw...that was some sick RG by Bryce! i think he was a millimeter away from hitting the Sorcerer on Scott.

either way, crappy refs or not, good job Scott. Thats a win in my book.

[NelsonLucca]

WTF!? Were they watching the same match that we were???

[Nabil Salameh]

Horrible calls!!

[Isaiah Mendoza]

if it were to the death scott would have won

[Karim Graham]

damn, scott has some serious control to keep his cool like that.
when people screw me over like that i go nuts and make sure everyone sees how bad the person fucked up lol

[John Hickman]

Maybe the ref was a Gracie :P

[Will Thaxton]

boo!

[Adam Martin]

yeah gotta admit that tap from the Ref was fucked up. And carpet grappling; not cool. Bad ref= sucks ass.

[einstein]

my dogs still love me.