Day 39

I could start this post by raving about how good the warsaw trials were, and that even though I didn’t do amazingly I had a great day, but I can’t lie. I definitely do not enjoy competitions. I get very tense and anxious... I’m fighting at 2pm I’m taking regular toilet breaks by 10.22am. I may not have actually enjoyed the competition, and I certainly am not proud of the way I fought, but to summarise:

1^st fight middleweight: 4 – 2. Two sweeps to one, very tense from me.

2^nd fight middleweight: lost by rear naked choke probably in under 2 minutes. Where to start? double guard pull, accepted top position, forgot how to control guy in half guard, rather than get swept, went to turtle, didn’t roll out when I should have, allowed him to establish one hook, heard some great advice ‘Don’t let him get the other hook’ immediately do the opposite, open up a space for him to put his other hook in. Game over.

1^st fight open weight: 0 – 0 decision. I almost fell asleep it was that boring.

2^nd fight open weight: lost by standing collar choke. The most interesting part of the day was my attempted guard pull on a 100kg judo black belt, who proceeded to scoop me up like a sack of spuds, then slam me down, attempting to mash me up between himself and the ground. Although to be fair I had almost ran him into an industrial tv camera filming the black belts on the other mat during a single leg take down attempt.

I did get joint 3^rd at middle weight.

It was joint but the other semi finalist left early

Retrospectively it was better to learn now that every blue belt on the planet likes to pull guard and that even after I sweep someone I need to then pass the guard, back to proverbial drawing board. No more guard for me.

Outside of the actual competing it was a good day. I got see some good BJJ and support some friends (3 medals from 3 entrants for us) and I got to spend some time with heavyweight world champion Bernardo Faria who struggled to make weight the night before...

So it was good to see him fight during the day and corner him. Yeh, that’s right I cornered the black belt world champion. I kept my jiu-jitsu coaching to topics I felt comfortable advising him on, especially with the language barrier. I kept my pointers short and sweet, here are a few examples

"4 minutes left Bernardo!"

"2 minutes left Bernardo!"

and ocassionally

"1 minute left Bernardo"

... as I was instructed to do before the fights. 

I was very impressed when I saw him do the exact techniques he’d shown us 3 days ago against black belts. I also got to see Rafeal Lovato Jr. beat Bernardo in the open semis, but later Bernardo came back and beat him in the heavy weight finals. The finals of the open weight black belt was great (Lovato won by 2 advantages against a Brazilian black belt who teaches in Abu Dhabi... didn't need the ticket anyway)

Just a lot of quality fights going on really.

I also got to meet Oli Geddes (standard, I was at a competition) and he was a really nice guy, probably said about him by everyone who meets him so it must be true. I also would like to thank him for the "don’t let him put his hooks in” coaching, even though I completely ignored it.

p.s. only 120 more days, and probably 5 competitions to learn how to relax and actually perform well at competitions before I become champion of the world. No biggie.