Lutador 4/9/2011 Post Mortem

We woke up at 6:45 AM, grabbed our stuff and headed into the ATL. We stopped off at the Dover Saddlery at about 9:30 after sitting in an intersection for 20 minutes watching road construction. After looking at some horse accessories we then headed over to the Cobb Civic Center (Which turned out to be a middle school gym) and arrived promptly at 11:20 where I was informed that they were "Running a little ahead of schedule so far". Well, since my division was slated to start at 11:50 I hurried off to weigh in. I tipped the scales fully clothed at a whopping 144.2lbs. For the 141-154 division.

I then hit the bathroom and changed. Dropped off all of my stuff near our crew and went to figure out when my division was going. Turns out the teens were still rolling, so I ran down to coach a couple of our kids. They were jittery, but they went out and did their best. Drake's first match in each division didn't work out so well, but his second match in both was picture perfect. As his opponent tried to pull guard he got his knee in, surfed to side control and then crushified his opponent. Good enough for 3rd place in both divisions. Katie was up against guys in her division and was generally just outmuscled despite her efforts. We're just gonna have to keep working with her on that.

At that point the Masters division was supposed to start, and didn't. And still didn't...

And so on until about 5pm. I finally stepped on the Mats after a ton of confusion for my first match of the Advanced No-Gi division. My opponent was turned out to be an Alliance Purple belt. I almost snagged a guillotine during his takedown, and had a near triangle choke but I was only able to fend him off for a couple of minutes, but he eventually just pressured to side control. Then I made a mistake while trying to escape and he caught my arm for the kimura, I fought it and tried to work my way out, but he had it in tight and I had to tap. He took 1st or 2nd in the division, I don't remember which, but I'm not disappointed with the performance.

A while later I got my first Gi match against a guy that just took 2nd in the Pan Ams. Again the grinding pressure just shut my game down and I ended up sitting under side control and losing by I think 3 points. I had a near collar choke on him, but couldn't finish it.

Sat around and ate a cliff bar and drank some powerade while waiting for the enormous absolute division to start. We had over 20 people in the division. I was up against a guy who weighed about 220 and I played my normal game, pulled guard, played spider guard, snagged the collar and tricked him into passing, then rolled under, worked my way to north south and choked him completely out. It was a bit disturbing, but he was ok.

Second match was against a guy that armbarred his opponent in about 10 seconds in his first fight. I worked to play the same game, got a decent sacrifice throw, and almost caught him with the same choke, but he was able to slip out of it and pick up a darce on me. As the room started to tunnel I had to tap.

So I went 1-3 again at this one, against a pretty high quality of competition. The Kimura I fought off ended up doing more damage than I thought, my arm is pretty sore today. Other than that I feel good. Videos will be up tomorrow some time and might differ somewhat from my descriptions since I haven't watched them.