Sunday, August 18, 2019

Kasai Atlantic City Bantamweight Grand Prix Reflections: Unity Closeout, Imanari, Geo, Calestine, Alarcon, Referees, et al

Missed most of the undercard, was coming from about 7 hours awake due to a family obligation, but made it for the duration of the main card and 3-4 undercard matches.

As has been my number one complaint with Kasai.......the inconsistent scoring of points reared it's ugly head yet again. Guys were able to score a near takedown point, but if for example you get a front headlock from seated, come up, hit a near takedown, there's no point awarded. I appreciate the awarding of points for near takedowns and submission attempts because some of the other Kasai brackets were not aesthetically pleasing to watch at all, and blah blah blah there is no points system that will ensure all matches are exciting blah blah blah. But, some of the calls reaked of the usual bias that has plagued and will continue to plague the sport for some time.

Guys were given points for toe holds with the leg fully extended, or a heel hook point attempt awarded to Murilo in a match who had locked his hands but no serious bite on the hip, but then when Ashley Williams faced Joao, there was the usual suspicious conference off of the mat by folks OTHER than the referees to determine the call....anytime the referees are starting at one another silently while debating making a call, the point of having 3 referees has gone out the window. Joao and Williams were down to the wire and Joao had a toe hold, and Williams had a heel hook. If you're gonna give the toe hold a point, why not the heel hook? Murilo had gotten a heel hook point attempt in an earlier match that was far less locked in that Williams and yet, no score for Williams. In the end, they declared the match a draw, essentially putting Joao thru to the finals as a result of calling it a draw/due to the point scoring for the bracket. It was great to see a semi diverse mix of styles represented with Sub Only (Geo and Calestine), IBJJF style points management (Ocasio, Miyao, Alarcon), Sub Only but points awareness (Ashley Williams), and the legend that is Imanari.

Murilo beat a brown belt on points in a 10 min affair.

Tom DeBlass won a match by kneebar that I honestly don't want to write anything about because I lack the ability to say anything other than it was a comical level mismatch if I've ever seen one. Go find the clips yourself and decide what you saw.

Diniz and Hinger handfought and circled to feel one another out early, then Diniz put on the heat with palm to palm/Peruvian necktie style grip, eventually getting the tap.
I didn't watch the Gaudio/Duarte match bc 1) I had been on a bus for 15 hrs at that point in two days and wanted to head home 2) the final match of the Grand Prix after it was going to be a fake match between Unity teammates anyway and 3) the only thing I'm interested in regarding Kaynan is the silence regarding his IBJJF test steroid email that's yet to be released. 

No comments:

Post a Comment