Fringe Grappling Style Showdown: Josh Starlord LeDuc vs Curran Jacobs April 27th

Despite claiming to love wrestling and/or  leg locks and finding reasons of not doing ADCC, two guys in a related grappling sport are gonna face off April 27th.

Catch wrestling reminds me a lot of Shuai Joao (that Chinese wrestling style). Sure, it looks cool, but the level of professionalism and competition is simply not the same as Judo or Wrestling and I've yet to see other than a few exceptions, any of them use it effectively in MMA or submission grappling for that matter.

Curran got a little bump in visibility by calling for a Gordon Ryan match but only to a ruleset of  his choosing (shocker). If you want a crack at a guy like Gordon with his accompanying resume, you better round up the $$$ to make it happen or chop down some big names further up the totem pole buddy. I guess Curran beat Travis Wiuff at a catching wrestling event at some point. That’s about it, in terms of grapplers you'd recognize. Anyhow, LeDuc is makin it happen having rounded up sponsors so my hat off to him. LeDuc also threw his hat in the ring when fundraising for Galvao vs Gordon was looking like it might happen but before Jesus Galvao decided the kids in his hometown didn’t need a school.

So, LeDuc will always have a soft spot in my heart for helping show that Galvao just posts about Jesus and does his work when it suits what he has planned in America, anyway.

Current Training Projects

Over the long haul, I've found it necessary to spend longer periods of time largely focused on one area of my game. Having played Judo before I tried Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and because I had plans of fighting MMA, my first JiuJitsu coaches forced me to start on my back. I spent the better part of a year or 2 working for submissions off my back in the Gi, and when in training MMA to fight in the cage, getting off my back and back to my feet. One of the first names I watched and found online to take from for this skill was BJ Penn. As I got better at submitting, but also the overall level of guys improved, and against heavier opponents, it was time to start sweeping. I spent most of my blue belt (close to 2 years - part of which was spent returning from full knee/ACL reconstruction) sweeping: deep half guard, reverse de la riva, combinations of spider and reverse de la riva et cetera. I got to purple belt and spent the first year or more working on my guard passing in an effort to catch it up to my bottom game. I moved to NYC, joined Renzo's and due to my work schedule and training, I had no real direction. I trained in the Gi, but had no overlying direction to where I was going. I finally sorted out work, and life, and the balance necessary to train when I wanted to and.......
About a year ago I transitioned to focusing on NoGi full-time. I spent the better part of that first year attacking the legs from the bottom, and elevating, hand fighting, making angles, but again - with the sole purpose of attacking the legs. Due in large part to the positional rounds we do every training session in the blue basement, I never left other skills very far behind (back attacks, armbar defense, attacking the turtle, referee's position, wrestling - we've spend extended periods of time both learning and doing positional rounds for all of the above and more). When I competed NoGi for the past year I almost exclusively attacked the legs.

Rewind to two months ago: now I'm focusing on passing the guard/legs again. My NoGi passing game is bare bones to say the least, but it's time, as passing results in back exposure and opportunities to threaten the legs. The real question looming: do you invest ALL your time and energy into a very narrow range of the game, for example: bottom position, open guard, attacking the legs and sundry other submission and getting to the back, or for example: your wrestling, fighting for top position and passing and getting to the back et cetera.

Danaher always stresses the importance of both having competency in all areas of grappling (both Gi and NoGi) but at the same time that real progress is made by truly delving into a position and/or submission on an exceedingly deep level.

I've been doing grappling as a whole for coming up on 15 years (between Judo and the overlap into JiuJitsu), and yes, there's a million techniques, but then again, in the big picture, there's essentially a -10 set of skills within which to work.

In NoGi (for the sake of simplicity):
Bottom position -- sweep, submit (upper body or lower body), get to the back, back to your feet
top position -- pass, submit (upper body or lower body), back take, attack the legs,
There's some overlap in the above, of course, but you get the idea.
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When you compete sub only & with all leg locks, the nuances between the positions and transitions change pretty significantly - as evidenced by the fact that experienced leg lockers have not won black belt level nogi world titles and black belt world champions have not fared well in EBI. Counter point? What about ADCC? ADCC is submission wrestling, and those 40 minute finals matches, or the fact that Orlando Sanchez won it without actually scoring any points, leaves it as a strange sort of outlier grappling entity that's not really a mix of sub only and IBJJF as some would like to partition it. There's a lot of overlap between the two, but ADCC, to me, really is an option C in terms of skills.
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At any rate, in my match last weekend, I defended a back take, came up to top position into a guard pass, forced enough pressure from the pass to create back exposure, locked up the kimura grip, and transitioned to a back triangle, forcing the tap via armbar a good bit later.
Sub Systems/Skills at work over the course of the last 2 minutes of the match:
Back Defense + guard passing leading to back exposure + kimura grip + back triangle + control and several submission attempts ultimately resulting in a back-triangle- armbar.

When you begin to see grappling as a macrosystem of microsystems connected together, and the real skill becomes forcing errors, capitalizing on the mistakes, or progressing in a repeatable fashion to the same junctions whereby you then overwhelm the defenses leading to a submission, the attributes of speed, or athleticism, or courage blah blah blah, while necessary, seem to fade into the background, and it becomes more about sensible structure of training, details, and problem solving under duress. 

Quintet Fight Night - 2nd Installment: Results and Recap/Analysis

I tuned in to watch the event as the first one turned out to be wildly entertaining at times despite the lack of heel hooks. Le sigh.
That being said, the mismatches of grappling pedigrees led to some great finishes and some real drubbings (looking at you Team Sambo *cough cough*).

I'll admit, I tuned into the first event with a sense of freakshow and TBH "why the fuck not?" even though it was lacking in heel hooks and no closed guard, but the size mismatches, and advent of some rule additions (no extended closed guard) allow for some degree less of stalling.

This installment featured 4 teams in a bracket - with winners facing one another in a final.
Team Carpe Diem vs Team Tokoro
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Team U-Zukido vs Team Haleo

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Daisuke Sugie vs Seiichiro Ito - 4 min match due to weight diference
Ito looks for some foot sweeps before pulling out a very smooth flying armbar attempt that looked pretty deep until the much bigger man countered by throwing the legs over and getting to his side. Sugie transitions to the back after a mount escape by Ito. Sugie gets hooks in with about 40 seconds left and continues to fight for the strangle from the back but Ito defends well if not adequately.

David Garmo vs Masakazu Imanari
Garmo hits a not particularly defended double leg, kicks out to side control, then advances to mount, Imanari not exactly working super hard to defend or escape, Garmo concedes mount to hunt for a guillotine over the top, then attacks an armbar that Imanari does just enough to escape and follow-up with a leg attack but too much space and escapes.
Garmo chains an arm drag to another attempt at a low risk guard pass but Imanari threads an omoplata but Garmo disengages to escape. Imanari never really gets up and Garmo gets side control, then mount, then begins to hunt for a mounted armbar. Repeat of Imanari not bothering to defend a pass, Garmo mounting him and now looking for a head+ arm choke that Imanari semi defends but honestly doesn't seem to feel very threatened by, that being said, Garmo is eating clock time in relatively safe places. Garmo on a back take after Imanari turtles in response to an over/under pass, then puts on a body triangle, couple minutes left... with 30 seconds left the ref opts for a restart in referees position but Imanari semi-Granby rolls immediately and replaces open guard. The match ends with Imanari having a stalling call/penalty against him but counts for nothing so both guys are off the mat.

Yoshihiro Matsumoto vs Hideo Tokoro (who hit that sweet flying armbar in the first Quintet Installment)
Tokoro passes easily after a guard pull, then hunts for a kimura but Matsumoto uses DLR to invert and get him off. Tokoro ends up in a backstep/kneebar possible situation off a back take attempt by Matsumoto. Tokoro is careless and ends up with Matsumoto on his back with a body triangle and 6 minutes to work. Tokoro begins to stand and peels him off then crouches in half-guard to begin to pass. From overhooking the arm Matsumoto hits an omoplata, but loses control in the sweep and arm lock attempt and Tokoro passes but ends up headlocking Matsumoto who sets a butterfly hook and again gets to the back then comes to mount and locks up the kimura grip to then retake the back and lock in a body triangle. Tokoro peels him off then falls back on an ankle lock but loses it. Tokoro hits a last second kneebar that looks relatively deep but not enough to get a tap. Both guys are off the mat.

Tomohisa Sera vs Naoyuki Kotani
Sera with a guillotine and belly down kneebar attempt early on. Ends with a kimura/back take/armbar attempt from Sera but once again, a draw, and both guys are off the mat.

Iwasaki vs Yano
Iwasaki with a big double leg to start, and looking to pass from top position. Yano locks in a neck scissor from north/south bottom, and will not stop squeezing. This really happened. I'm not joking even though I wish I was. He then looks for it again and locks it in shortly thereafter. He looks for it again near the boundary but when the ref goes to reset them, he takes several seconds to get up and is sucking serious wind. Iwasaki shoots and Yano perhaps thinks about defending but honestly just sorta collapses to his back and Iwasaki locks up a head+arm triangle. Yano guts it out and lessens the danger by getting back to being mounted but without the head+arm triangle locked in. Yano literally rolls to the center of the mat when the ref goes to reset them in the center. Yano survives a keylock attempt but concedes mount, and fortunately for him, Iwasaki doesn't use the defense to spin for a top side/mounted armbar. Yano survives another deep head+arm triangle attempt. At this point, I was curious. It turns out Yano is 48 years old. Dude might be having a heart attack for all we know, and pulling a Kimbo in there. They go to referee's position and Yano doesn't move when the ref says go, and Iwasaki locks in an RNC, then hooks, and Yano is defending by reaching for the feet/hooks. Seriously. At this point, I don't know what more sad, watching this unfold, or that Iwasaki couldn't finish the 48 year old on the verge of having a heart attack/stroke.

Team Carpe Diem moves on due to a ref's decision in the last match of the head to head.

Team U-Zukido vs Team Haleo

Hikari Sato vs Tokudome
Tokudome with a very quick guillotine attempt, to mount, then loses position as Sato defends, then uses a reverse 10 finger grip I've actually not seen a lot of people use (I was taught it by a former coach of mine, Sean Spangler (youtube his nogi matches), and Tokudome utilizes the reverse 10 finger grip to get to a head/arm grip and controls the leg and sticks Sato on his side, and forces the head/arm choke for the tap.
Excellent work.

Tokudome stays on the mat and now faces Manabu Inoue
Tokudome from standing gets the head down low in front of him and against gets the reverse 10 finger grip from the previous match, and begins ratcheting it into hunt for a Darce/Marce/head & arm choke variation...and steps over for a Peruvian Necktie that briefly looks like curtains, but Inoue escapes. Immediately following the escape, however, Inoue keeps his head tucked low underneath Tokudome who now locks a full figure four/bicep grip with his opponent trapped underneath him. Inoue survives and spend some time with a half butterfly hook in thwarting passing attempts by Tokudome who hunts for some guillotines over the top but doesn't quite have the leg dexterity to lock up the head/neck and clear his legs from Inoue's defense. Inoue keeps looking to come up on a single and thus putting his head/arm in the danger zone with Tokudome looking to look them up again. Tokudome hunts for the back and Inoue begins making a face akin to going into labor, except the only thing he's giving birth to is an entirely defensive performance apart from some feeble single leg from bottom attempts in an effort to escape. He's simply even more ineffectual than Tokudome is at this point with 2 1/2 mins remaining. As it turns out, Inoue has some sort of rib injury which ends the match. Tokudome advances to face his 3rd opponent.

Tokudome vs Hamagishi
Tokudome looks for a flying armbar but a bit too much space and ends up on bottom. Hamagishi looking to pass half-guard but loses it and back to the feet, Tokudome hits a nice double to get to the hips, then cuts the angle to finish and cartwheels at the last second to finish the takedown into a guard pass. Nice work. Hamagishi hits a nice inside trip/kouchigari from a collar tie all by itself and now looks to pass. Back to the feet and Hamagishi hits another inside trip this time finishing it without even the collar tie to control the head. Impressive foot sweep timing, control, and dexterity. He briefly gets to mount and looks to isolate a kimura but loses it. They exchange a rolling kimura for a flying armbar and Hamagishi gets a nice kimura to some real crank behind the back but loses it at the last second. Hamagishi finishes in mount, looking for another kimura but time runs out and both men are off the mat.

Victor Henry vs Kanehara
Henry is Josh Barnett's protege, for what that's worth. Kanehara is no stranger to the Japanese combat sports world. After some dancing around, and a reset to the feet, Kanehara hits a nice blast double to put Henry on his back. Kanehara looking to pass, slides over a hook to advance directly to mount. Henry doing some closed guard, Kanehara with his head down low, also in a pretty overt stalling position. Surprised no penalties as of yet, TBH. They get reset to the referee's position with Kanehara on top and jumping the gun, they reset again and back to the feet and another double leg to a pass from Kanehara to mount. Henry looks for a choke from bottom mount and concedes the back and Kanehara transitions to the back and a body triangle and they're handfighting. Henry gives up mount to escape the back triangle and Kanehara briefly looks to have a head/arm triangle but loses it while deciding whether to force it or transition to the back. Kanehara shoots an anemic double then sits back and falls back on an ankle, which seems unlikely with his hands locked down near his waist but he gets the tap.

Kanehara vs Daisuke Nakamura
Nakamura with a nice head and arm choke to a kimura to an armbar that he loses in the hitchhiker defense. An almost identical transition as he peels Kanehara off his back, then passes to mount then looks for the head and arm choke to then transition to a belly down armbar and gets the tap.

Nakamura vs Roberto Satoshi Souza
Souza, the brother of the Souza who was a part of the first Quintet event. Souza sits to a single leg x, and begins looking for a straight ankle lock with Nakamura considering attacking with one of his own. Souza easily defends some passing attempts and efforts to lock up his arm, pulls it out, then steps over to take the back and begins handfighting for the strangle. Nakamura reaches too low with his hands to address the body triangle and gets RNC'd with relative ease and a slow squeeze.

This finishes off Team U-Zukido and we move on to the finals featuring the 2 winning first round teams.
Team Carpe Diem now faces Team Haleo:

Sugie vs Omigawa
Omigawa defends a backtake and transition by posting his arm out stiff and Sugie smartly seizes it and takes it home for his mantle.

Sugie vs Kazuyuki Miyata
Yo. Miyata literally reaches over to pin the wrist, from top position as he hips out to pass, then sets in the kimura on the not fresh Sugie and cranks it behind the shoulder to get the tap.

Miyata vs Garmo
Garmo goes for a wrist lock from closed guard, then shoots a triangle, later he locks the hands and reaches over to drag the leg into a toe hold/kneebar position but loses the knee line as Miyata handfights him. Miyata disengaging and telling Garmo to stand, and then trying to literally just shuffle around/the outside in a weak effort to pass Garmo's legs, with no real knee through or pressure passing attempts to speak of. Garmo throws up the roll thru kneebar and gets the omoplata and Miyata is lazy/naive and doesn't pull far enough out and gets his leg sucked back in and ends up getting kneebarred. Miyata panic taps pretty early TBH, because he threads his own foot in shallow and feels it trapped inside the triangle/bite of Garmo's legs.

Garmo now has the unenviable task of facing Souza
Souza utilizes a front head lock to get to a single then almost uses it to pass or get to the back but Garmo recovers bottom position with half-guard. Souza uses a half-guard pass to head/arm choke to rotate to the back as Garmo defends. Souza sets a body triangle and has wrist control on Garmo's left wrist. Garmo unwisely rolls to belly down and halfway there, Souza gets the arm across and short choke grip to crank and with the pressure stuck going belly down it's a wrap.

Souza vs Matsumoto
Matsumoto has the right gameplan to stall and be defensive to try and take Souza out of the bracket with him, but with a minute left poorly defends a backtake and gets strangle straight away.

Souza vs Iwasaki
Iwasaki wisely employs a down on both knees low guard passing style with a lot of double unders and such, but it takes Souza out of the mix. Smartest thing he could've done to get Souza out of there and stop him from eliminating further teammates.

Tokudome vs Sera
Sera pulls an armbar out of the hat in 33 seconds.

Sera vs Kanehara
Both men are the last representative from their team.
Neither man finishes the other.....it's a nailbiter.....


Team Carpe Diem gets the victory due to warnings given to members of Team Haleo in two matches in the bracket.

Ouch. That's how the cookie crumbles.

ScrambleTV: The Mercurial Kazushi Sakuraba

I'm a fan of anyone taking time to talk to one of the more enigmatic figures in MMA: Kazushi Sakuraba.

His famed fights with the Gracie clan are the stuff of legend.

Watch, learn, and know: