Lot's and Lot's of BS

It seems like all of my posts are catch-up posts so why bother putting it in the title.

Sat The Good Fight

Mike and I went out to Ocean city for The Good Fight. The tournament was much much small then the one in NY. Mike only had one other guy in his division, I had 4 people in my division. When they put out the brackets it was just me and one other guy, but I guess two other Purple belts came out of the wood work so they put us all in one division. There was 1 skinny guy, 1 middle weight, me (a generous medium heavy at 198) and 1 heavy weight claiming to be 215/220 but I suspect he was more in the 225 range. Mike and I both fought at the same time during all of our fights which was disappointing because he didnt have anyone to coach him.

My first fight was against the middle weight and not to sound cocky, but I knew I was going to beat him the second I grabbed onto him. I scored one takedown with an O Uchi Gari but he got back to his feet. I moved him around a little and scored another takedown with the same technique. From there it was guard pass and mount putting me up 11 - 0. I tried to get fancy going for a mounted triangle and then an armlock off the position. He ended up coming up but it made no difference. I finished him with a Kimura from half guard. Not sure when it happened but at some point I hurt my neck and it got stiffer and stiffer as time went by.

My second match was against the heavy weight. I watched his first fight. He fought the skinny guy and scored a takedown with a nice Uchi Mata. Off the takedown he held the skinny guy down in Kesa Gatma for over half the match. Having seen his style I was leery of giving up a takedown and letting him get to a strong position. In retrospect I probably had too much respect for his takedowns. I was moving him around but when he pulled me in for a Russian tie I quickly pulled half guard. All was going well, I got my underhook he worked back to his feet and I hit a Tani O'Tosh, just like I showed that exact sequence in class a few weeks before (actually the class was going through my head as we were going througt the sequence, it was kind of cool). Anyway, I threw the Tani O'toshi pretty hard and he kind of bounced away from me when he hit the mat. He was able to scramble up to his feet and get back on top. I grabbed a half guard but I did not have a good bite and he was able to pass. From there he held me down inside control until he got warned for stalling. I managed to turn to a turtle toward the end but time ran out, he won 3 -0. This was my first tournament loss since I began instructing. It actually feels good to get it out of the way but I really was not happy with my performance. I also was not thrilled with my conditioning. I didnt get tired but it was not in as good of condition as I thought. If it was a Judo match I would have run out of gas.