Open Mat & UFC

Friday night the UFC came to town, putting on a decent show. A bunch of us went and had a great time. It was odd watching the fights without commentary and multiple camera angles, but still exciting. It was an interesting experience.

I wasn’t feeling 100% Saturday morning. I figured it was a combination of being out late and having a few beers. But I went to open mat anyways. Christine introduced me to a blue belt visiting from Kansas City. I introduced him around to a few other people, then went out to stretch. I warmed up with Matt H, then grabbed Wes, the visitor.

It’s a strange situation to be in, for both us. We’re both interested in trying out our styles against someone new. I don’t want to be a push over, but neither do I want to crush the guy either. And he’s in the same boat, but for different reasons. In any case, he was pretty strong, and knew what he was doing. We went for a couple of rounds at a slowish pace.

I switched to JR, and we had some fun playing around with a few things. I grabbed Megan too for a cool down round, as it was getting close quitting time for me.

And then Damian gave me the nod. We had a great round and a half or so together. He started out with a quick loop choke. I have seen it in a video a while back, but never seen anyone use it, so it was new to me. He rewound and showed me how he did it. I’ll have to play with it some. We restarted and went back and forth in his guard for a bit before he swept me, but I landed in half guard. I switched to De La Riva, and started to switch to a hook sweep, but he stopped me and pointed out that it’d be easier to use a De La Riva sweep, rather than switch everything around. He’s right of course. I swept to mount, inched up, and then did a armlock/cross choke double attack. We restarted, and he was on top. He passed, and I rolled to turtle, then trapped his arm and tried to roll him over me. He ended up with a crucifix and choke. I commented that that turtle roll is 50/50 for me, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. He took a minute and pointed out that I needed to roll at an angle, over my shoulder, rather than over my side. By doing so, he doesn’t have the angle to crucifix or take my back. I was pretty happy to have gotten 3 good pieces of advice. He commented that I seemed to be moving pretty good, and had more of a plan of attack (or defense) in each position that we were in. Nice to hear from El Jefe!