Sunday, June 14, 2020

JitzKing Middleweight Results: Wrestling and Gamesmanship take Marinho to the Gold

Side guard is dead. Laying back on your side and hoping to utilize it to initiate offense only works if your opponent cooperates by coming forward and stepping knee in the middle to initiate passing et cetera. A lot of recent examples illustrate this: Tanquinho vs Miyao at ADCC is the obvious choice, but JT Torres in ADCC also springs to mind. JT utilized this to defeat Lachlan, Nichols, and others. If you show up to the gunfight unwilling to engage in the standing regardless of if you're down on points or if it's overtime, you're predictable. A smart competitor will use this against you. It's simple. Some JiuJitsu and submission only nerds will complain but too many examples have shown this. Guys willing to fight ugly, negating, stalling matches will simply not allow you to do much of the actual JiuJitsu you want to do.

Taza picked up a pull thru kneebar and a heel hook win over 2 guys with (deep breath) minimal awareness of leg entanglements. Marinho and Valdir both showed that gamesmanship and top pressure matter. Valdir took out reigning black belt IBJJF NoGi world champ Johnny Tama by simply being smart with his passing, resetting when necessary, and timing the takedown in OT and clearing the guillotine Tama used to attempt to counter.

Rau picked up a slick opening round outside heel hook from a grip variation less commonly seen that from what I could see actually popped the foot/ankle rather than the knee. Taza was able to pick up the OT win because of some deep leg entanglements because of how Valdir chains together his passes. Marinho avoided the same positions against Rau and was able to do the opposite .

Jimenez used his backtake threat and pressure to negate Tackett's leg dig out attempts, and the size difference was close enough that it worked. Jimenez hunted for the back against Marinho but got target blindess and let his leg get pulled thru then gave up the heel hook as he attempted to tie together a body lock takedown to drag himself onto Marinho's back. The stacking of the bracket with guys who favor a couple of different rule sets was interesting in terms of the matches. John Combs showed his willingness to wrestle which got him through to later in the tournament than he would've managed otherwise.

The days of only playing bottom are winding to a close in NoGi. If you can't wrestle, you're going to lose matches on gamesmanship that have overtime rulesets for golden score, or that require a clearly defined grip in order to pull guard. It also means that in transition you are ultimately unwilling to come up to the feet, and a smart competitor will reset and disengage and reset endlessly if need be. 

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