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This is my third match of the tournament, the final for the blue belt lightweight division.

So there’s full disclosure, AJ is a teammate of mine, so I had an idea of what to expect, as did he. He is the only competitor I was nervous about fighting, and I’m told he felt the same way about me.

To give you some background, AJ has been wrestling for the past 4-5 years, and is currently in college on a wrestling scholarship. He’s been training BJJ with us for most of a year now, in which time he’s won several tournaments. He fought and won in MMA with little more than his wrestling and a ton of aggression.

You’ll hear Eduardo, our coach (and the referee) call this match “the technique versus the determination”, which sums it up perfectly. I’ve never trained with anyone who is able to maintain constant aggression, never getting tired, not caring about pain, never giving an inch, always engaging, driving forward. I’ve had AJ in the meanest triangles I can do, and he’ll just suffer through it for 6 minutes then rip out in the end. I’ll get the tightest armbars I’ve ever gotten and he’ll just shake me off and rip out, 20 seconds past the point I thought his arm would have broken. I’ve seen him pass out to more chokes than anyone else.

We’ve all told him to chill out for his own health and safety but he swears he’s not getting hurt. We’ll just have to take his word for it. At least it wins him a lot of tournament matches.

I hope I built enough dramatic tension. Now for the fight.

The Final Match

I pull guard, knowing there is no way in hell I’ll ever take AJ down. He is prepared and immediately underhooks both my legs to start a double under pass before I can close guard.

I reach across and underhook the opposite side then gable grip, blocking the guard pass. I try to pull his arm into my guard for the triangle, but I don’t go crazy for it since I feel that he’s already to locked into the pass, and I’ll just tire myself out trying to muscle it.

I do some goofy stuff like grabbing my feet and locking my legs around his head just to see what I can do before he starts driving to pass again.

As he comes around to my side, I feel that my guard is almost gone as my legs slide off to the side. I grab his far triceps and drop my leg on it to rock him back a little, then circle my left foot in and step on his chest and face to create space. As he comes around a little more, I push on his hips to keep some space then grab his elbow and open it so I can bring my knee under his armpit, returning me to guard.

I do some kind of open guard for a moment, but just when I circle my right hook in, he drives a knee through. I turn on my side and start digging to underhook his leg as he comes into my half guard. My other hand comes under his armpit to push on his chest and defend the crossface. I rock him up once but never get anywhere with it since he drops his weight and reaches between my legs to kill my hips. He sprawls his free leg and gets rid of my underhook.

AJ gets an advantage for putting me flat on my back from my half guard without me having any good grips. I switch to a lockdown on his leg since I feel I don’t have much else. When he starts untucking my lapel, I shoot for double underhooks and gable grip my arms around him and try to rock up into him. As I do this, he passes my lapel up behind my shoulder to his other hand, which is behind my head.

With my lapel wrapped back like that, my upper body is locked down and I can’t turn into him any more. He’s got a very secure position and turns towards my legs to keep reaching in and opening me up.

Knowing I won’t get the choke but wanting to do something, I grab his collar and try to pass it around his head to my other hand. He turns to face me since he feels something around his neck which gets him to stop working to open my guard for a moment.

He turns towards my legs again and grabs my foot itself to try to peal off the lockdown. He creates a lot of space when he does this and I’m able to turn on my side again. With him opening his legs for a wide base, I pull my leg out and go to closed guard since my half guard was going to be dead as long as he had that lapel wrapped.

I climb his back several times from closed guard, but he drives in and postures to shrug me off. I get impatient and do something crazy like grabbing my own foot and pulling it over for an omoplata, which he rips out of.

I’ve got some kind of open guard for a moment then he gets double underhooks on my legs again and starts passing. I block the pass as I did before by bringing my hook in front of his face and pushing his elbow open. When he backs off I’m able to get the opposite side underhook and gable grip again.

He keeps driving and keeping my hooks out and eventually passes my legs. As my guard is lost, I shoot my legs out towards his, trying to get something. What I end up with is a strange position that you might mistake for half guard at first glance, but it’s not. I took a photo of it since it’s hard to explain:

What’s funny is earlier that day I was watching a match and saw someone do this same thing and me and the guy I was sitting with scoffed at it, saying it’s nothing good. And it wasn’t for them, since their opponent passed anyway. I still don’t like it but I have to admit it saved my ass. It kept him from scoring points for the pass, and gave me the second I needed to do the heel drag escape (which I put up just to refer to now).

While holding the weird non-half guard, he passed his arm in front of my face and I went for a kimura to keep his from getting a good grip on me, but knowing I wouldn’t be able to finish it from such an odd position.

As I return to half guard proper, he wraps my lapel again. My arm is stuck on the wrong side so I can’t underhook. He reaches between my legs and blocks my hips, then drives into me to keep me down while sprawling until he opens my half guard enough to pull his leg out. He passes to side control and gets 3 points.

After pausing to fix our belts, we restart in the middle with me under side control. I put my leg up on my knee to block the mount, since I know he’ll be looking to take it, and I’d never be able to come back from 7 points (and 1 advantage) down.

Luckily for me, he moves to north-south, which is better for me in this case, though I’m worried about kimuras. Once he’s above me, I start scooting my hips out (putting my head under his chest) and swinging my legs side to side. I go for the heel drag once then start turning to my stomach. He counters by getting a Nelson of some sort (forgive me for not knowing my wrestling fractions).

Then, out of nowhere, I throw a hook in and take his back. The crowd goes wild. A Brazilian guy cheers loudly.

AJ tries to stand and buck me off but I hook behind his knee and grab his leg with both hands so he can’t get up.

Then the timer goes off.

I win on points, 4 to 3.

Sadly, I don’t have footage of it since the cameras dead by then, but AJ and I both fought through the absolute division, each of us beating heavyweights and purple belts, to fight again. The match was almost a mirror image of our first match, with me fighting from guard for a while and getting passed. I actually go for the exact same escape and get the first hook in as I take his back, but he does everything he can to keep the second from going in, and the timer rings.

He wins by 2 points since he was given a takedown on my guard pull because he grabbed my legs. So he gets his revenge.

More footage to come. My first two absolute division matches next.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Tournaments, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.