The Prison Guard is Coming!!!
I can’t tell you how amazing it is to have so many brilliant minds all working together to improve the system, we all benefit from this. First, Erwann Marshall takes what I showed him with the 100% back in the Bomb Squad days and runs wild with it, adding many new transitions and tweaks. Then Sean Bollinger takes the rubber guard and adds double bagger control to it, which took the RG to a whole new level with new submissions, like the straight jacket and special k, and those new subs are now being added to the monkey mount in a big way, crazy shit. Now Edwin “The Warden” Co is doing the same thing with homie control in a huge way as well.
Birth of Homie Control
I am always looking for new ways to get my opponents to give me a deep hook so I can transition to spider web via swim move, the toss or directly from the mount. About 2 years ago while rolling against Denny, I ended up in butterfly guard with double underhooks. A position that I had nothing from before. Anytime I would have double underhooks, I was usually in half guard, and from there I’m good. But DU’s in butterfly guard, I had nothing. But for some reason, I decided to go to full guard with the double underhooks still intact, then Denny pummelled his left arm in and that left me with over under control from the front side, which I recently named homie control. His right arm had me in a headlock, and his left arm was free underneath. From there I knew that if I could bump or shuck his right arm over my head, his arm would be in danger of my deep left hook. So I squeezed homie control, pushed on his right hip with my left foot, arched my back and straightened my neck, and viola! His right arm popped over my head right into deep hook territory.
It worked 3 times on Denny that night, and a new transition was born.The first 2 times he postured up when I sunk the deep hook in, so I transitioned to spider web off the toss. The 3rd time Denny tried to stack the deep hook, I went to the swim move. I called that transition “Dio” after Denny’s real Greek name so that I would always remember when it was born. It was gonna be in Mastering The Rubber Guard, but while proofing the book, I noticed that 2 pictures in the sequence were missing, so I decided to pull it. I continued to teach in class every now and again hoping that at least a couple of my students would master it and add to it.
Homie Control II “The Mookie”
About a year later while rolling with one of my top wrestlers, John”Mookie” Blalock, a transition from the dogfight using homie control was born. Like I said, Blalock is a bad ass wrestler, about 100 times better than me, so fighting him from dogfight is a nightmare. I can get to dogfight with him, but I could rarely complete the sweep. Then the same thing happened with Denny; I decided to lose the DU’s and go to homie control from dogfight. Low and behold it broke his whizzer, and I took his back. I was excited that this might be something I could use against powerful wrestlers, so I decided to keep trying it, and it worked beautifully 2 more times. One more back taken, and the last time Blalock gave up the sweep to avoid his back being taken again. Again, I called it “The Mookie” so that I wouldn’t forget where it started. Now from the dogfight, Blalock focuses on controlling my right wrist with his left hand to block homie control, that bastard!
To be honest I never connected the mookie with the dio. I didn’t see that it was homie control that was the key to both moves. I looked at the dio as a move off double underhooks in butterfly guard, and I looked at the mookie as a move off the dogfight not noticing the key element in both, so they both remained unrelated to me.
That is until Edwin fell in love with homie control and went crazy with it. He came up with at least 3 awesome transitions from homie control including HC to New York and HC to butterfly sweep to the mount.
