BTG 100 - CJI vs ADCC Results

Hey guys, welcome to Breaking the Guard. I'm David Avalon and today we're going to be talking about all the grappling that went on this weekend, which we had CGI and the first ever giving away over $2 million in cash prizes and then we had ADCC 2024 as well. I'll start with CGI and I'll go through a quick rundown of all the matches. Now, uh if you heard I did a day one review. I'll revise that uh over here and talk about uh not just the actual match results and whatnot, but my interpretations of the event as well now that I've completed the event, right? Uh, first off, my predictions. And again, this is going to be huge spoiler alert. So, if you haven't watched any of the events and you want to see it, tune out of this. Come back later, right? Cuz I'm going to spoil everything. All right. So, if you saw me predicting my match, the matches for CGI and the winners, I got it right. Nikki Rod won his division and Kade Routolo won his division. That in a sense a little disappointing and I only say that because uh it meant that it was very predictable. Now on the under 80 kilo most people were saying Tai right because everybody says he's the better of the two brothers. I think not so but and and it turns out I was right in this case but um their division was very tightly contested. The under 80 kilo division was jam-packed with killers, right? And I guess we'll go with them first, right? You had Tyola versus Jason Nol, which was one hell of a match. Uh Tai chose to try to out wrestle the wrestler and did very well. He didn't get taken down for two rounds and was scrapping toe-to-toe with with Nol. And the few times Nol did try to commit to a takedown, he almost got submitted for his efforts. So he had to bail out and not able to complete the takedowns. On the third round when he did get the takedown, uh, Tai conceded and then went into a leg lock to finish the match pretty quickly. So on one hand, very cool for this fans that we got to see a hardcore wrestling match of one of the best US wrestlers versus one of the best grapplers in the world. On a tactical perspective, very silly. If I was Tai's coach, I would be pretty upset because this is not a super fight. This is a tournament. You have four matches and you're going to purposely fight a strategy that is very difficult when you have an easy path to victory, right? So, and I think that's what cost him, you know, the chance to win the tournament personally. Next match, Roberto Himenez and Levi Jones Liry. Uh, again, I didn't know much about Levi Jones. I know he was one of these inverting guys that can play Kg Guard, but man, he whipped out a wicked fast heel hook on Roberto Himenez, which was a criticism of Himenez that he has a leg lock weakness and it was definitely exposed by Levi. Uh Barbosa versus Kenta. Uh again, this was uh not as a dominant match as I I thought it would be. Uh Kenta held his own pretty well. Lucas edged them out. Uh, ended up winning the decision. Joseph Chen versus Andy Varela. Uh, not the fireworks I was hoping for. Joseph seemed to pacify Andy pretty quickly. And I think Andy might have had too much respect for him because of the previous match that they just had maybe a couple weeks ago. And uh, he wasn't his usual self of doing very acrobatic passing, being very aggressive with head clubbing. He seemed very subdued and uh it made for an easy victory for Joseph Chen. Kade Roto versus Mateas Denise. Again, I thought this was going to be one of the tougher matches for Kade and it turned out to be one of the easier ones. He got him with Aayoki luck very quickly in the round. Well, not very quickly, but in the first round, uh at towards the end of the first round, he managed to catch him, but he was looking good the entire time. And uh that was a good sign of things to come for the young man. Then we had Hinat Konuto versus Tammy Tommy Langacher. And uh I I was rooting for my boy Hinato, but it wasn't in the cards. Uh they had some very good scrambles and Hinato got to do some back flips and whatnot, but Tommy was just able to dominate position much better and uh rightly won a decision. Uh Majid Haj and Egan Flanigan. again. Uh I I would have liked for the gorilla hands to pull out W, but I didn't see it and uh it didn't happen. He got caught pretty quickly with a heel hook by the leg locking wizard. Uh not a surprise there. Nikki Ryan versus Andrew Tacket. This was interesting because we thought this was going to be a lot more entertaining and it was for maybe 3 minutes. And after a great action sequence between the two young men, it looked like all the time was spent of uh Nikki Ryan. And the remaining action of the rounds was just Andrew Tacket doing whatever he wanted, including putting his knee on his neck and just dancing all over him. Couldn't finish him, but he positionally dominated him. So that was surprising to me. And if we continue the bracket, uh, Tyrotolo versus Levi. This is something that I thought was kind of weird, um, with the rule set and the judging that didn't seem consistent. Levi has a very particular strategy. He's just going to pull guard immediately and then play his Kg Guard game and inverted game trying to find leg locks. Tai was of course wise to it, but he did get tangled up quite a few times. And it seemed the judges heavily rewarded the strategy that Levi was playing, which was very uh submission reactionary, right? Like just letting the guy step in and then going for it, not trying to initiate takedowns or whatnot. And Tai didn't really have an answer for his guard. Uh he couldn't get around it, couldn't and he seemed like he was getting frustrated. And uh Levi ended up winning that decision. Then uh Lucas Barbosa in Shocker was able to submit Joseph Chen with a knee compression. Not something you see every day, especially from uh against a butterfly guard. You don't really see it too often. It's possible. Uh but uh for Lucas to pull it off, that was definitely a surprise. A welcome one at that. Then Routtulo defri Langacher by decision just dominated him uh kind of a similar way to be honest that Andrew Tacket dominated Nikki Ryan and then Egan Flanigan versus Andrew Tacket again he similarly dominated Egan Flanagan like he did uh Nikki Ryan but couldn't put him away. Then when it went to the semis, uh, we had Levi Jones Liry versus, uh, Lucas Barbosa. And Lucas Barbosa was able to control. I'm not sorry, Lucas. Levi was able to do more of the same, which he plays his inverted guard, gets some good leg bites. No one was able to figure out the puzzle of his uh, of his guard game, and he won a decision there. And then on the other side was the best match of the weekend in my opinion. And I think anybody who watched both events, the ABCC and of um CGI uh just an incredible match. Andrew Taget, Kate Routolo just went toe-to-toe with each other. Didn't hold any punches back. They were just going all out and close match to be honest. But I I felt Cade probably edged it out, right? But it was really close. It was a split decision uh that they gave it to Cade. Then we had the finals, which was Cade versus uh Levi. And this time it's a five round match, very similar to how his brothers played out, except he lost the first two rounds, uh K did, but then he won the last three rounds. He seemed to be able to negate getting caught in the legs as much and was able to create a lot more passing pressure. Getting close to passing well relatively close a couple times, but still no one really figured out how to beat that guard, but he did enough to win the decision and scored a million dollars for the Routollo family. So, I mean, he had a hell of a performance. And you know, shout out to Levi Jones. Just a very tricky guard, you know, not the funnest guy to watch if I'm being honest, but uh definitely a puzzle, right? Uh and I can respect that. Moving on to the over 80. Like I said, this is a division that I could have lived without watching it, right? And it's not to dismiss any of these fine men, but Nikki Rodriguez was kind of on a class of his own. And that's what I meant when I say like I predicted like he would win this. It wasn't because I was Nostradamus. Everyone predicted him to win it, right? And he won every match by Rene Kachoke. All right. Uh he would take him down, wrestle him to the back, get there. I'm not saying this because Nikki Rod's great. I think he's definitely improved. He looks very sharp in his jiu-jitsu. This just wasn't that level of opposition that he needed, right? Uh or that would challenge him in my opinion. Uh he had Max Himenez in the first round uh and beat him by Reneg. Although the first round was pretty close. Max actually was able to reverse him a couple times in scrambles, but by round two, Max looked like he gassed out and then he had an easy time with him. Owen Lizley and Muhammad Ali, this was a tighter match. Um but uh Muhammad couldn't figure out the the puzzle of uh Owen's judo and Owen was able to secure top position and Ali didn't seem to have the impetus to push more and go for more chances. So again, he's been doing a lot of MMA. I wasn't sure how that was going to affect him. I think it definitely did affect him. Um, I don't know how seriously he took this match and I think that kind of showed, you know, uh, we then had Adam Bradley versus Kyle Bomb and uh, that was kind of another one that was that looked kind of close. I I did think that Bradley did squeak that one out. Luke Rockhold versus Pat Downey. Kind of a downer to be honest. Pun intended there. Rockhold, like I I've told you guys, I've trained with him before. I've even shown the technique that he does really well, which the guillotine, but he seemed like he tried to spam that guillotine immediately. And he jumped on the guillotine every opportunity he got, kind of over uh showing it. And Pat Downey was able to defend it pretty easily and score lots of takedowns, get a lot of positional dominance, and Luke seemed just having fun being there, not really caring if he won from the looks of things. So Pat Downey ended up winning that one. The biggest upset of the night was probably Victor Hugo versus Lucas Canard. Lucas Canard was like a last minute addition to the card as as someone got hurt and he ends up heel hooking Victor Hugo in 1 minute and 10 seconds which Victor Hugo was going to be the big test for Nick Rodriguez and that got taken out immediately. Big shocker there. Then you had Santos versus Pedro Alex. This is one that I thought that the judges got it wrong. I thought Pedro Alex had won, but it was a close match. She could have gone either way. Santos ended up getting that decision. Uh, Filipe Andrew versus um, Kirklet, which was the wrestler. This was a really boring match. We didn't get any wrestling at all. Uh, Felipe was smart. He sat guard immediately, but uh, Kirk Flet didn't know how to approach guard. He clearly wasn't training jiu-jitsu at all. uh but he knew enough to be strong and Felipe wasn't able to secure any good submission attempts and he ended up winning the decision anyways but not a fun match. And then we had William Tak versus Joel Roachcha and this was a very fun match in the first round. These two guys were going back and forth uh scoring on each other. Williams was getting the better of it and almost well he had his back at the end of the first round looked like you know he was starting to take over but I think the challenge of grappling someone that big and which I have grappled Rocha before he is immensely big and strong and it kind of wears on you and it looked like um Tacket got tired and rounds two and three he got dominated he was able to survive and lose to the decision. Then we go to the quarterfinals. It was Nikki Rodriguez, Owen Livesley, Nick Rodriguez, uh, rolled through pretty easily by Rene Kachchoke, Adam Bradley versus Pat Downey. This was another decision that Bradley was able to win. Uh, not that fun to watch. Lucas Canard versus Inasio Santos, another one that was kind of an eyesore, but Santos won by decision there. And then Filipe Andrew versus Jo Rocha. This was a close match. I don't necessarily disagree with the decision. They gave it to Andrew. Although the problem is they were doing live scoring. They were telling you the score each round and they had given the first two rounds to Rocha. When they went to the the final decision, they gave it to Felipe, which would have been technically impossible because he couldn't have only won one round and it was a 10-9 that they gave him. Uh, so I think what happened was they had called the wrong winner, but the problem is that you just screwed up the strategy of the fighter because he was going in there expecting that he could have coasted or not have to take so many chances. So very unfair to Roachcha and uh big mistake, like really big mistake. I mean, this is a million-dollar mistake, right? Um, so not cool. Anyhow, Nick Rodriguez then went against Bradley. He also was able to secure Rene Kachchoke. Uh Santos lost to Felipe Andrew by decision and then Nikki Rodriguez beat Felipe by Rene Kachchoke and he was the second guy to win a million dollars. That sums up the whole event. I'm not going to do the ACC breakdown that that match by match since there's too many divisions. Um, my impressions as a spectator, I told you in my day one perspective, and I'll just repeat quickly, I hated the pacing of it. It was very slow. Uh, 16 matches took 9 hours to watch, which is dreadful, especially when like 12 of them don't have submission finishes, right? Like if I go through the card here, we had one, two, three submissions. Wait, hold on. There's more than that. Four, five, six, seven. Okay, now there was eight submissions. So, you know what? Let me take that back. There was a good amount of submissions, eight submissions in the day one, but that was eight submissions over nine hours, right? So, it was like a submission less than a submission an hour. So, when you're watching live, it is hard, man. And I was in the crowd and everybody's like, "Oh, just get it finished. Just get it finished." Like, just break his ankle. Like, no one wanted to be there for that long, right? Like, it's a long time to be at a show, man. Like, nine hours for that few matches. And what's worse is that they would put like 30 minute delays between the matches. And my complaint is like we got to pump those numbers up, baby. Like there should be like 5 minutes between a match at most if you have that short of a roster. Like you're not like as a fan, I don't want to wait there for 9 hours. I want to be in and out as quickly as I can. If I'm being honest with you, I want to see as much content as I can. I think especially nowadays society where we're used to getting everything right now, let's make it quick. So, I felt the the event pacing was poor. Uh, as a spectator, I had front row seats and I could barely see anything because I was front row, but then I guess they have VIP sections and the VIP sections are pretty much maybe a little bit beneath me, but then you remember that the CJI is in a pit. So, I didn't have clearance to see anything on my side of the pit. And it seemed like everybody got there more often than not. And what's worse, people in the VIP section apparently couldn't see either because they would always stand and then when they stand, you definitely couldn't see anything. So, it was very frustrating, you know, and uh you know, people who are paying good money to have good seats and then you are looking up at the screen, it makes you feel like you got you wasted your money, you know, because I could have seen better at home. So, that wasn't great. Um, I also didn't like that the whole theme of the show seemed to be to dump on ADC or make fun of the Gordon Ryan or more Jazzm or the New Wave guys. Like, I get that they have a personal beef. It's not mine. And being reminded that you have this like childish squabble, it's just annoying, right? I also didn't care for the super fight. Uh, oh, I didn't go over the super fights. Uh, Fion Davies with Mackenzie Durn. Uh, Fion Davies obliterated Mackenzie Dur and that I didn't see that coming. I mean, I figured Fion would probably win, but I didn't realize it' be that dominant of affair. She threw her, you know, completely into side control, got the totally dominated her, passer guard, and was eventually able to arm lock her for the win. from like a I think it was like a reverse or like a rear triangle armbar type of thing. I forget now, but totally outclass her, right? And but I mean it's the way things go and that's entertaining in its own way. But the Gabby Garcia and Craig Jones thing seemed kind of like I don't know. It's just cringey to me, right? It's like I don't really care about your guys inside joke, you know? like I want to see quality matches and not like these like freak show like joke things and HT the guy Hen La right he was playing character which was funny but I don't know I guess it's comic relief it just wasn't my cup of tea what could I tell you I think it makes a mockery of the sport too personally so wasn't a fan of that uh but at least Craig didn't blow out her knees and he was being very nice he had many occasions where he could have submitted her and he was kind of carrying her through the match a little bit. He wanted to finish with a leg lock it looks like, but Gabby was actually pretty stubborn that she wasn't going to tap to a leg lock. So then he just went for a choke and she tapped, you know, and that was that. But I didn't really care for that either, you know. Um, as far as the crowd, day one had a good amount of empty seats. Uh, day two seemed to fill up a bit more. And the day two crowd energy was a lot better. Uh, and it had a good vibe, right? Like people were into it. But if you were to ask me if I would go again, I probably wouldn't go again just because I would probably see it better at home if I'm being honest. Maybe if I had a VIP seat, um, I would go, but if I was going to have to sit in the crowd and they used a similar format, I know I'm not going to see, well, I'm going to have to look at the screen. If I'm going to look at the screen, I'll look at it at my home and I can lay in a recliner couch and eat food and do all the things I would be more comfortable doing, right? So, there's that. Uh but again being fair first event of course they have a lot of things to learn from and I'm sure they'll improve and the fact that fighters got paid and they got paid well because they also gave a 20 grand bonus uh and a 50 grand bonus. So that's awesome. I like seeing the fighters get the money. So my hope is that CGI improves and makes it in second event and does even better with it. Let's move over now to ADCC. Now, ADCC is too big of an event for me to go match by match. I'm not going to even bother. So, I mean, find the results online. I'll talk about some of the standout matches that pop out in my head and the final results as well. I felt day one of ADCC amazing. Probably one of the best day ones I can remember. There was lots of submissions, lots of great action. The matches were flowing in. All the critiques I had about CJI were answered by ADCC as far as there's three matches going in once and the moment a match finishes, the next match is jumping in into play. So, you're constantly have a source of entertainment. I will say they could have used an instant replay camera, which they didn't seem to find until the end of the show because of course when there's a lot of action going on, you're going to miss something and then you want to see it and then you can't. It's kind of annoying. But other than that, seating angles as a spectator were very clean. I had floor seats. I could see directly, no one in front of me, no one blocking me, great view angle, and uh more comfortable in my opinion. So, I did like that. And the day one action was intense. You know, if we go uh early into the contest, let me go down here from the heavies up, right? Because we had heavyweights. The good matches that I watched that were very interesting. One, Luke Griffith in his first match against Mansour. Microoft wins by rene 1 minute 51 seconds. He just ninjaed his way to the back very quickly. Got the choke. Luke was is a backtick beast, you know. So, it's no surprise to me, but it's still always amazing how quickly he can move. Uh Filipe Penna also was able to win by Armbar against Brandon Reed. And again, this is a good return of form to uh Felipe, who had a rough ACC the last time around, and he did pretty well here. Some of the the stories I I'll follow here. One is of the WY veterans. You had Rafael Lovado, Roberto Cyborg, and Vagner Roachcha. All over 40. They're all right about the same age like me, like 42, 43 maybe. They all made it to the finals or yes, they all made it to a final I should say. Um, now unfortunately none of them won gold. They got close. There was three silvers and a bronze if you can believe that because not only did Cyborg win, he won a bronze in his 99 under division, he went in the absolute and got all the way to the finals match. And then Lovado got a silver in the in his division and 99 under as well. And then Rocha in the 77 under in a very close match, mind you, with Mika Gaba. He gave Mika a really hard time. So again, impressive showing. Uh Michael Pixley scored the upset of the show on day one by defeating Nicholas Maragali. That's something that nobody was predicting. And my take on that match was that Margali underestimated the threat that Pixley posed, you know, and it looked like he was trying to wrestle with him and that was a mistake because Pixley is a really good wrestler and he was able to take down Margali a couple times in the no score period and Margalli went to stand up on a single, got uchimed really bad and when he landed it looked like he posted bad And I guess people were saying he dislocated his shoulder, but either way, um, he was pretty much dead on the ground and Pixie just threw on Darkstroke and he tapped immediately, right? I cuz I think he knew it was dead anyways, right? But, um, great victory for Pixley, you know, really uh, taking out the guy who was supposed to be the double gold. you know, he was predicted and I would have thought he was going to win as well because he has looked great in all his other competitions, but uh he I think he underestimated Pixley and it cost him dearly. Uh other than that, Kynan Darte looked phenomenal in this tournament. And again, spoilers here, he tapped out, I think, seven of eight, you know, in his division, which was 99 under. He went to the absolute and I believe he tapped out three of the people in the absolute uh including Cyborg. Just a phenomenal run. Very clean. Kind of made it look easy to be honest. He was guilloting people from top half guard and from bottom half guard like it was a joke, you know. So just his guillotine must be unreal. If I get to train with him one day, I would love to see how this guillotine uh pressure is like because he was getting some funky guillotines from positions that people normally don't tap to. Uh so kudos to him, right? Uh so he's set up for the next super fight. Uh other than him, other guys, Bodini did a great job. He ended up getting a gold. Uh he lost in uh who did no I'm sorry he won his division but he almost lost a few times and one of the best matches of the day um was probably between his finals match him and JRod. JRod had a good run getting into the finals and he was giving it to Bodini in the first 10 minutes. Now, this is something that I told my my friend there that uh I was sitting next to is that John Carlos seemed to have trouble starting because every match he would start losing like when he went against Gabriel Almeida he was he got his back taken actually early got taken down thrown and I'm like man what's going on here like this is a serious upset if he loses but then in the second period you know the scoring period he turned it on and then dominated. And that seemed to be a theme with him. So, I was telling my buddy like if JR wants to win this, he's got to press the early advantage because it seems like uh Bodini is a slow starter. And uh seemed true to my word because JR was all over him. But in the second part of the match, like I said, Bodini uh Bodoni took over rather and was able to win that match. He was able to score couple back takes and win on points. He also had a very good absolute run. He lost a decision that was he lost two decisions actually that were like kind of like toss-ups in my opinion. Kind of the luck of the draw there if I'm being honest. It didn't really go his way. uh like he lost a decision to Cyborg which I wasn't sure honestly who won. He also lost a decision to Dante Leon who ended up taking bronze in the absolute which was also kind of a tossup. Um other people that did really well I'm just looking through the division. Mika Gavalo ended up winning his division the 77 under. That was he had a great showing. He did end up losing in the absolute in a rematch to Dante Leon who ankle locked him really bad. That that was a interesting change of events because he's another guy that everyone thought would win the whole thing and Dante put a stop to that pretty fast. Baby Shark uh had a good run. He made it to the finals with Diego Pau in a rematch. He had lost the last match by a submission to Pau and this time around he was able to re to score the W and uh he dominated at the end of the match. The most of the match was pretty even but at the end he scored and was able to hold that advant I think I'm sorry he he did return the favor. He submitted him with an arm triangle and he actually entered the absolute but his first draw was Kynan which did not go well. He got guillotine pretty fast, you know. So, too much of a size disadvantage. The last thing I'll comment on that really got my attention was in the women's divisions under 55. Adele Forino had a fantastic performance. She submitted just about every girl I think except my Bastos in her first match. And not only did she win her division, she went into the absolute and she tapped out the heavyweight gold medalist and then she beat the lady goat. Um, and the lady goat got penalized multiple times because she was afraid to engage with her, right? Uh, you know, so her submission game was very on point. And I remember I met this young woman in Australia when I was doing a seminar tour. This would have been like maybe like seven years ago or so. So, it's kind of cool uh how things have come along and she has now become a star, right? And she's called out uh Fion Davies, which would be a great matchup. They're both the same way. They're both really sharp submission aces. It would be fun to watch. Uh final comments, Gordon Ryan did not look great this time around if I'm being honest. He and Filipe Penna had a super fight on day one which was very lackluster. Uh not a fun watch and Gordon squeaked his way into a victory scoring a reversal on two off of Felipe Penna takedown. Uh he he justly won but didn't make it look great like he he he looked like he struggled. His second super fight versus Yui Simois looked a lot better. He scored a takedown of Yuri quickly, which is not an easy feat, and then just pressed him the whole time, not giving Yuri any chance to breathe, but couldn't put Yuri away. Got close a few times, scored 21 points on him, but could not finish him. Uh, Yuri seemed pretty helpless to be honest. And, uh, but Gordon still didn't look like good form if I'm being honest. He looked like he was missing something. I don't know if he was hurt or maybe the tummy ache stuff, but didn't look like he did in 2022, which was just absolutely unstoppable, but he still won. And now he's got seven ADC wins under his belt, including the super fights, and he's set up to fight Kynan now, which would be an interesting match because Kynan looked great. Uh, this version of Kynan maybe gives a lot of problems to Gordon. Who knows? As far as the events who won, I'll tell you this, um, didn't look great for ADCC. As a spectator, I enjoyed it. I preferred ADCC over CJI. Uh, I thought it was a lot more comfortable to watch, faster paced. Day one. Day two ADCC was really slow and uh because you know of course there's less matches but I don't know why they feel that they have to spread them out over a longer period of time because they finished later than they did on day one. They finished day one at 5:30ish and that's including the like the super fight shenanigans. The day two finished around 7:30 7:45 for like a fraction of the matches. Now, I know they want to highlight like main events, so like championship belts, they want to put one at a time, and I get that, but uh I don't know. It's hard. Uh I feel there's some faults that ADC has to pick up on. One of them being the the the time periods are so long. As a competitor, I can tell you if you make a no score period, there's going to be very little action in that no score period. Take away the no scores, take away the turtle wool, you're going to fix so much of the boredom. Now, day one didn't have it. It's shorter periods and it looked like everybody was after it. So, like I said, that was probably the best day one I can recall being at over the past uh what 12 years. No, not longer than that. Jesus, like 20ish years that I've been at ACC. So, the day one was out of the park good. The day two, it had great moments, but also had really sour, boring moments. The ones that people criticize ADCC about where you have 30-minute matches with nothing going on, right? I feel these could easily be fixed if you address the rules. Take out the no scoring, take out the turtle caveat, and you'll have fixed most of that. You want to make it even better, add the push out rule. One point getting pushed out of bounds. Actions are going to be amazing. Uh, you don't have to put slant walls, although I think the walls are good. They do create, like I said, a viewing obstacle, which makes the experience harder for fans that are watching live. So, you can leave it on the floor, just put a push out rule. It's going to fix a lot of stuff. But, I feel like the athletes did a great job of really uh pushing the action as much as they could. Day two was just slower paced for me as a spectator. um and made it hard to watch and having my wife with me, she didn't really fall. She doesn't understand all the intricacies of the sport. It's hard to try to convince someone to stay for like 12 hours, right? It's just man, it's a lot. Not 12 hours, but what it's like seven, nine hours also. It's a long time. My same critique I had about CGI being too long and slow. Day 2 ADC was kind of like that, right? So, I wish it was faster paced. I would also say that the crowd was not as good. ACC 2022, the crowd was phenomenal. There was I don't think you could find an empty seat in there. It was stacked. This time around, lots of empty seats. I had empty seats all around me, right? And I feel a lot of people were leaving earlier and before they wouldn't just because like they know the match was going to drag and like okay I just want to go and do something else. Um so I think we have to take advantage of attention spans being short make events quicker. Don't drag them out longer than they have to be. Being at an event for 12 hours to me is not great, right? Like let's make it shorter, right? I want to do other things in the day. Especially when we're watching essentially the same contest repeated, you kind of get blinded to the coolness of it when you see the same thing over and over and over and over again for 9 hours. So like you don't want to lose that novelty. We got to speed it up a bit. But in the war of events between CJI and ADCC, I think CGI has the upper hand here in that they came in with a couple months of planning and lots of crazy ideas. And they seem to pull off the same type of crowd density. Although it's smaller crowd numbers for sure, but as far as the amount of empty seats, it's kind of the same. But their crowd was a bit louder and more enthusiastic whereas the ACC crowd was not was kind of a lot more subdued at certain moments. You could hear a pin drop, right? So I don't think it lived up to the hope that Mo had, which was that this was going to be the best ADCC in memory. Day one was great, but as far as everything else, I think ACC 2022 was a better event overall. Uh, and it's clear that CGI hurt ADCC, right? Uh, which was their intention, it seemed. So, that's why I'd say like it looks like CGI won this one, right? Now, if CGI is a one-off, then they lost. They might have won the battle, but lost the war. It would have been a pirate victory. If they continue to run events, now ADCZ is gonna have to adapt because now people saw two guys walk away with a million dollars and they know it's real. They're going to be much more likely to jump ship. I'm sure there's a lot of people that were skeptical and didn't want to take the chance, right? But now that they know that the money is actually there and it's for the taking, the next CJI is going to have people lining up. I would imagine. So if ACC doesn't do something about the pay structure, they're going to have problems, right? They're they're going to have more difficulty recruiting talent. The loyalty is only going to go so far, especially, you know, when you're starving or you're a young man and you're trying to come up in the world. A million dollars is life-changing for these guys, right? So, uh, ACC has to step up a bit. and the criticisms about productions and stuff. We never really paid attention to it before, but since Craig has spotlighted it, you do see things you're like, "Yeah, he's going to kind of got a point, right?" Uh they had Michael Buffer there just to say, "Let's get ready to rumble and that's going to cost a couple hundred,000." And you're like, "Was that money well spent?" because uh I mean he's a Michael Buffer's an icon, but his delivery of let's get ready to rumble was really soft and he's an old dude now, man. Like he doesn't have the pipes that he used to. He's probably kind of phoning it in. So that wasn't money well spent, right? Not in my opinion. And I know they had these pyro technics and stuff and you're like, if this is where like hundreds of thousands of dollars are going, it's not money well spent, right? like take care of the fighters, right? Like I feel like you're going to spend a few million dollars on well I don't I hope they didn't spend a few million, but if you're going to spend a few hundred,000 like the prize pool can be boosted significantly with that type of money, right? Considered at the rates that they had it, which is like $10,000 for first place, right? Uh and you remember you're talking about eight divisions. So, there's like $80,000 for first place uh on the regular divisions and then there's $40,000 for the absolute and I'm not sure what they're paying the women. If it's I think they if they matched it then women are more lucrative than men now, which would be interesting. But, um at most $160,000 dedicated to the first place winners. So you imagine, you know, that 200,000 you gave to Michael Buffer, that's his what I heard was his going rate was, you could have doubled the prize money for the first place winners. And there's lots of places like that. Like they also had these little gadgets that they had everybody wear that would light up with a color so you would see like lights all over the place. And that was distributed to 13,000 people. How much do those things cost each? You know, that's another 20 grand maybe that could have been put into prize money. So these type of things when fighter pay is been exposed as an issue you it makes it hard right and so Craig definitely brought awareness to that which is going to be something that I feel ACC needs to address. Um and if they do you know they have the resources to make it happen I would imagine. Um, so yeah, that's my thing. Even though I enjoyed ADCC as a I feel CJI's day two was really good. Not amazing, but it was really good. ADCC's day two was good. Not amazing, but it was good. ADCC's day one, amazing. CJ's day one, eh? Uh, so those were my thoughts. You can disagree with them or not. I think I've spoken enough already. Uh, there was also UFC and I I don't even know the results of the UFC yet. I didn't get a chance to watch it because I've been, you know, kneede in grappling. Um, so I have to figure out what happened there. But I'll leave you guys with that. All right. Uh, I think I've watched enough grappling now for to last me a few weeks. Uh, a lot of interesting stuff that happened uh, in the event though. Leg locks are still a big thing obviously and of course um, back takingaking those seem to be classic themes. At least back always is, but leg locks is obviously the new meta that's been there and it's still there. Uh I think Levi Jones also presents an interesting puzzle with his Kg Guard uh that at least for that rule set was very beneficial for him to play. But yeah, uh let's call that a show. I'll see you guys. I'm actually going to be in Miami next week. So if you guys are in the South Florida area or visiting, I'm going to be teaching classes at the Freestyle Fan Academy, uh which is my home gym. And uh that will be on Tuesday, Thursday. Oh, it'll be a Thursday t Monday and Tuesday from the 21st to the 28th. I don't know where the days land, but I'm sure you can figure it out. Go ahead then. Uh if you're in the South Florida area, visit me there. I'll be teaching regular CL the CAP classes, which are our color bell classes. And if you're not a member of the gym, you can just do a drop in and join up and for the class and have some fun with me there. I would love to see you all there. All right. But other than that, now I'll tap