BTG 136 - UFC and BJJ Stars and the Future of New Wave

[Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. On today's episode, I'll do some recap of BJ Superstars 15 and UFC Fight Night. Ian Gary Machado versus uh Carlos Pratz. I'll go with the UFC first. And uh I'll be honest, I didn't tune into many of the fights cuz I was watching the BJ superstars and there weren't many fights I was interested in in particular on that card. I did see the last two, the co-main and the main. And the co-main was Anthony Smith's retirement fight, which apparently he announced very early. This was going to be his last fight. I believe he has over 60 fights in his career. That's a lot in MMA, especially uh Anthony Smith who has been fighting at UFC for like over a decade. So, it's a testament to his staying power and his skill set. Uh he was fighting the upandcomer and I'm not going to even try to say the name. I can't recall it exactly and I'm probably going to butcher it anyways, but uh I believe it's a Asian gentleman who's been coming up the ranks uh knocking everybody out. And uh this fight went as I would have expected with the this uh Asian guy just beating the crap out of Anthony Smith. I mean, it's a weird way to want to go out under a retirement because he acknowledges that he's being fed to this guy but thinks that they got it wrong, but uh they didn't right and he kind of has lost all of his recent fights in the same fashion where he starts getting clobbered, he starts turning a lot and then it becomes a TKO. In this case, the fight really turned for the worse for him because uh gentleman threw a nice lead elbow that just split him wide open right over the the forehead, which is normally not a bad place, but it was bleeding directly into his eye. And this is one of the things that I would tell fighters is a disadvantage to shave your head because you have nothing to soak up your blood. And uh that's exactly what happened cuz I've had splits in my head many time and you might see like a little trickle but that's about it. His case it was kind of just raining down and it was falling right over I believe his left eye and he kept swatting at the eye. Obviously you you can't see well blood's going in your eye and that's usually a indicator that they are going to stop the fight. But uh in any case, he lost uh seemed to take it fine and they gave him the whole, you know, video montage and send out. And if he's happy with it, I guess that's all that really matters. It's not a way I would want to go out personally, but everybody has their own way of doing it. And I guess that's how what he wanted. Fair enough. Now, the more interesting fight to me was Carlos Prates and Yang Gary Machado. Both mostly strikers, although Ian can definitely grapple. He's a more well-rounded the two. Uh, Pratus is more of a Muay Thai fighter. He's coming from the fighting nerds camp, which, you know, with the fourman squad they assembled are 19 and0 in the UFC. Pratz I think is 4-0 himself. So they have a pretty great record going into it. The fight starts and Ian just takes charge immediately. Uh throwing lots of high kicks uh practice the southpaw. So, I believe that was to preoccupy him with keeping that uh left hand of his up and blocking versus being able to fire because he was blasting high kicks the whole fight. And some of them looked like they partially got through. Even when you block, you you get some ricochet and it's not fun. And plus, your forearms are getting blasted too, which isn't great either, you know, like you can't break your arm that way. Uh, so Ian easily won the first three rounds with no real push back from practice who looked like he was very hesitant. Uh, didn't know how to approach, wasn't throwing a lot of kicks, uh, and wasn't able to find his range. Ian's head movement was good and was getting out of the range of any punches that he was throwing. Ian landing good shots. One point landed a nice uppercut that looked like it wobbled uh or not wobbled, but it definitely shook out Carlos a bit. He also sprinkled in a lot of takedowns, which initially he wasn't really going for. It was it was more just like what I tell people, go for it just to give your opponent something to think about and have to lower their stance a little bit. So he would go like high crotch and then just abandon it. Like he wasn't really committing to it. He was just giving this guy the look. Now these two were oddly like respectful to each other. Like high-fiving each other like multiple times throughout the round. I always found that weird. Uh I'm fighting you. I'm trying to kill you if I can. Like that I don't need to like, you know, knuckle up every time something cool happens. It's a weird thing for me. You can even see the referee is like, "What the hell, dude?" Like they would start the round and it was like a over uh almost like a sparring round. Really? It's kind of weird to me. Like why are we like touching up so much? Anyway, in the third round, I believe Ian scores the takedown and now he starts committing more to actually getting takedown because he's been able to get them. Carlos, to his part, is doing a good job getting back up to his feet. Uh Ian's not really able to secure any dominant positions for a long period of time. Not able to do any meaningful damage. Now, the fourth round is where things start to get interesting. Again, it's all Ian Gary Machado. First three rounds, there's no contest. Uh fourth round, Ian gets the early takedown. looks like he's dominating. And then about halfway through, I'm not sure what particularly landed, but Carlos threw something that really messed up Ian. And he's now starts going over committed on takedowns, just like shooting, shooting, and and he's getting sprawled out hard now. And it's looking pretty rough for him. But, uh, the round ends, Ian survives the round. And you can see now there's a renewed vigor under Carlos, which is you have to push this guy. And Ian, you know, they're trying to tell him just, you know, stick the jab. Don't go for takedowns too early. Uh, wait for the final minute or so before you start going for takedowns. Uh their idea was you're probably using too much energy on takedowns and that's why you gassed because it did look like he fatigued hard. When they start the fifth round, Ian looks like he's in good shape again. Even at some points looking like he's starting to take over and then again something shifts. Um, and I believe Carlos starts landing some good shots. At one point, gets a takedown, lands a good groundup pound shot, and the fight looks like it's about to end. Cuz at that point, Carlos starts hammer fisting him, and Ian's like doing everything he can, just turtling up, grabbing a single leg, and rolling to his back, alternating. And Carlos, every time he hits him, looks like he's about to finish the fight. And there's like a minute and a half if I if I remember correctly. So like there's time to finish, but it seems like he's Carlos is just like one punch away from finishing it or at least one flurry away, but doesn't really throw it. Uh he's like oddly conservative towards the end. There's like certain positions where like Ian's hanging on the single leg where he's like trying to wrestling reversal instead of just like hammerfisting the guy and just making the fight finish there. Like Ian was clearly rocked and also looking very fatigued, right? Probably from being rocked. But it didn't look like Carlos either understood the severity of it or was worried about getting reversed or I'm not sure what. But at this point, I wouldn't be worried about being reversed cuz you're going to lose anyways, right? Like there's no way he's winning on the scorecards. So, he needed a knockout, right? Um but Ian miraculously survives and gets up to his feet and then in the last 20 seconds or so just dances and Carlos doesn't throw a single strike. He's kind of chasing him, but he's not going like ballistic. So, and he ends up losing by decision. Just weird like um I saw some people slamming on Carlos saying, "Oh, for a guy in the fighting nerds, low fight IQ." And I don't know if it's low fight IQ, but it's definitely you lose a little matt awareness there if you're not realizing your like fight situation, which is like you need a knockout. you need to, you know, take big risks and not be afraid of losing earlier than you intended because again to me whether I lose by knockout or I lose by decision, the loss is the loss. Uh I'm out there to win. Uh so I felt like that that drive wasn't really there. And to me that's kind of symbolized by all the oh good job, you know, like high-fiving each other or smiling at each other. It's like to you this is a game. And I've talked about this many times, but to me, there's people who are athletes and there's people who are warriors. The people who are athletes are playing a game. So, they can, oh, hey, good job. You got me today. Whatever. Warriors are there to kill. They're trying to win and they're doing it by any means necessary. So, I'm not knuckling you up and say, "Oh, good shot." Like, no. Like, you I'm now if you got me with a good shot, I'm one step behind now. I'm finishing this fight and winning. So these two people seem to be athletes to me, right? Which is not a a dig, it's just an observation, right? Like they and even though it was funny because uh I think in the press conference Ian Gary Mach goes, I'm ready to kill. And then Carlos responds, ready to kill? That's easy. Are you ready to die? And in my opinion, neither of them were were either ready to kill or ready to die in that fight. You were you were, you know, giving yourself props so many times like you're wasting your your mindset is not in the place to finish in my opinion. And I know that of course they've both finished many people, but in this particular fight, they looked like they were enjoying the game versus trying to finish each other. And Carlos was very close. Like as close as you can get without getting the TKO is what he got, right? Like some referees would have early stopped it, right? Which would have been wrong. But I'm just saying it was that close. In any case, Ian moves on when comes back from a win. I don't think that raises his stock personally. That kind of I felt like leaves him right where he's been at, right? like he nearly lost to a guy that really he should have been able to put away by his credentials. Like Shopkott was a harder fight and he lost, but I think he did better as far as like that was a more well-rounded fight. Uh that was a much trickier fight in this fight. It was a guy that was purely a striker that didn't really even though he says he has a BJ black belt doesn't look like he had any groundwork that he was going to utilize other than just getting up to his feet which is fine. If I was a world class Muay Thai fighter I would too. Just saying that it doesn't move Gary up the ranks in my opinion. Keeps him right where he's at. uh on Carlos. I haven't watched much of his fights before, so I wouldn't know where to put him besides probably maybe where he's at. He did show good stand up ability. He wasn't able to be held down. Uh didn't really get into a lot of trouble. Like I said, he had one like uh boxing exchange where Gary landed a nice uppercut that snuck under the guard and then caught him with a few more, but that was about it for Gary as far as like damaging shots. I think he just got outplayed. Uh Gary understood how to use his range and his height better and how to mix up his weapons. and Carlos didn't seem to be able to figure out how to approach him right until he got to him very late in the fight when it was too late. Anyways, we move now on to BGJ Stars 15 and I'm just covering the eight man 185 lb division with modified ACC rules. I just learned it was modified. The one modification I make was no penalty for pulling guard. We had matches that were very close, not as entertaining as I hoped. Uh the I I'm not going to get the matches in the right order, but I hopefully get all the matches correct. The ones that I remember, you had Oliver Taza versus Janatus Gracie, which is a rematch. And this is one that I was like, "Oh, this is going to be a tough one. I I like Oliver. You know, he's trained with me a bunch of times. I've trained over there with them." And uh I feel he's very small for that division. Uh and Jonatus is is quite large. So, that was a tall order for him. However, he did really well. Uh, he was able to wrestle with him for a bit and he used his wrestling to set up leg entries and got some decent bites, but nothing too strong. He did score some nice octopus sweeps, you know, uh, reverse seat belt type positions, uh, that weren't scoring, but he was the one in control. Well, not in control. I would say that he was the one that was actually pushing the action. Jonatas a few times would just get a good position and hold it. And by good position, I mean, oh, he'll have like top half guard trying to get a cross face. And that wasn't really working a lot. Um, and these were short rounds. This was 7 minute rounds, 3 and 1/2 minute no score, 3 and 1/2 minute score. Uh, neither of them got advantages or takedowns or points, nothing. no penalties. So, I went to a decision and I thought this is Brazil. They're probably gonna give it to Gracie and he was on top, but uh they gave it to Oliver. I'm like, "Oh, all right. That's I mean, that's what I thought based on the action, especially at the end. At one point, there was a good scramble by Oliver. Then Janatus got on top, closed guard, and then just by locked them for 30 seconds. And you can see Oliver is like, man, like he's not doing anything. And Oliver opened his guard and started wiggling his legs and uh he never let go. So I think that um gamesmanship played into Oliver's favor because he ended up winning the decision in that one. So some interesting moments, but not a lot uh happening there. Uh, another match that uh, played out was Ma Galva versus John Blank. And this match, Blank went to guard early and he was playing looking for leg locks. At one point, he made a pretty big blunder. It looked like he tried to jump and like go into a false reap or something, but kind of missed and immediately gave up a guard pass. Fortunately for him, it was in a no scoring period, so it didn't really count, but he did end up getting mounted and giving up some control time. He was able to recover during the scoring period, so it was still 000. Uh Ma was on top the entire time putting some good pressure. Towards the last minute or so, Mika was able to jump into a mount score and win by decision there uh by points. So that was a second match. Uh, another match that played out there was Roberto Himenez and I'm trying to remember the name of the other gentleman. It will come to me later. I'll move on to another one which Elijah Dorsy versus Rafael Paganini. I didn't know anything really about Rafael. I know Elijah, he's one of Lloyd Urban guys, very good. He's won the US trials. Uh, and he had a a very solid performance against Rafael who was playing guard. Uh, Elijah was able to press pressure from top and was threatening a lot to pass. Whereas Rafael was looking for leg entanglements quite a bit. Elijah was able to defend real well. And towards the scoring period, Elijah was getting closer and closer to scoring guard passes. And it looked like he was starting to wear on Rafel quite a bit. And in the ending of the match, he was able to score guard passes if I remember correctly and win on points. I'm still struggling to remember who Herto Himenez went against. And it would have been a good name. I just it's slipping me at the moment. Um, but I know that he went on to win a decision and if I'm not remembering the match, probably not a good sign that wasn't that entertaining. Uh, but uh, he did win the decision. I'll come to me later. But we go into the semi-final round now. And now Roberto Himenez versus Oliver Taza. And now this is a big sizes advantage. and Himemen is is competed at over 200 pounds, you know, whereas Oliver, you know, competes at 170. So, the size disparity is apparent here. And Oliver did a good job of attacking and like they got into some wild scrambles. At one point, Oliver was able to get into the donkey guard, aka reverse closed guard. I thought he was going to A block him. He didn't go for the A block, oddly enough, though. He was going for the tow hold, but he never switched to an A block. Uh, but it didn't seem to phase Roberto at all. Uh, and it didn't look like for whatever reason they either of them thought it was a serious submission. But I don't know. I've seen a get apparently 69 of those in competition. So like, and I've seen other people score them, too. I've used them in training. it work. So, I'm not sure why Oliver didn't go for it, but um in any case, towards the I think it was like the last 30 seconds, uh Roberto was able to score a pass. Oh, no, no. He got to the back. It looked like he was getting close to a pass. Uh Oliver tried to grabby roll, almost cleared him, but then got flipped over and then got into a body triangle. And uh at one point looked like Roberto was going to finish him with a choke because he had the one arm already sunk in, but Oliver was able to fight off the choke, but was just stuck on his back. Tried to do uh some turning escapes and whatnot, but just wasn't able to clear out and lost by points. On the other side, you had uh Elijah Dorsy versus Mika Gavalo. This one has controversy to me because Elijah had the better wrestling here. Uh Ma had tried to score takedowns. He get shut down each time. Uh Elijah would score takedowns and wasn't able to score any, but I felt got the better bites as far as getting closer to them. Um, the one aggressive action that Ma took that was I guess partially successful, he pulled a he jumped a closed guard, went into like a over hook to try to isolate one of the arms to set up a plata. But the moment he dropped to his back, you know, Dorsy was out and uh, nothing really came of it. Whereas the Dorsy at one point had a good look on his back uh but wasn't able to stabilize it. Worked from top position because Mika sat to guard which at the time I thought well he lost because he just gave up a penalty point but I didn't realize they modified the ACC rules so that they didn't give penalty points for pulling guard. Kind of weird but um they ended up giving the win. It was a 00 but the referee's decision to ma which uh in my opinion kind of favoritism of you know a Brazilian in Brazil because this is in Sa Paulo. Uh would it be the first time? I'm not sure. Yeah, cuz I didn't see Mika winning that one. I thought he had lost and he didn't look like body posture wise that he had won. Uh but that's what happens when you go to a 000. Then the finals match was Mika and Roberto Himenez. And uh this was actually probably the most entertaining exchange because I forget the sequence of events, but uh Mika I think went for a flying armbar and then it got really tight. Roberto, you know, rolled through with it. Hitchhiker escape. He looked like he was out. went into a reverse arm crush, you know, reverse arm lock, like shoulder crunch position. That was really tight. Roberto had to roll through. He adjusted into another arm bar and then man, that arm was cranked. I'm pretty sure Roberto took some pretty good damage because it wasn't a straight. It was kind of bent, you know, and it was being pulled at the angle. Not great. And he was forced to tap. Uh just a brutal finish, but like that was a very clean finish by Mika. Good way to end the tournament. You know, he did have some controversy in round two in my opinion, but round three, he really sealed the deal there uh against a very tough opponent and Roberto Himenez. And now just a great display of sticking to a submission. Like he went for it and never let go of it. like he it became multiple versions of an arm bar from like a regular like a flying arm bar to like a reverse arm lock to back to a normal arm bar, but he never gave it up. He knew he had something there and he he was like a a dog on a bone. And that's such an important aspect of being a good submission guy is not giving up on yourself, right? I I tell people all the time when you have a strong submission hold the there's a battle of who's going to tap first, your opponent or you. And your opponent taps, you win the fight. You tap, you release a submission because it's not going to work. You gave up on it. Now, sometimes it makes sense to give up on it. But other times, maybe if you would have committed a little bit more, you would have gotten it, right? So, uh, kudos to Mika for gutting it out because, uh, Roberto Gimenez is a tough customer to put away. I mean, big strong guy, very great jiu-jitsu, flexible. So, to catch an arm bar on him like that, like your your skills have to be very, very well on point and your will has to be. And clearly he he did. So, congrats to him on that win. And I think that was a $100,000 prize pool for eight man. If I I hope it was dollars in that way cuz otherwise it probably not as good. I don't know the the conversion ratio, but I would assume that USD is higher. Uh but if it's 100,000 USD, that's a nice uh prize to walk away with. And I just reflect back whenever I hear these prizes, I'm like, "God damn, dude. I was doing 60man absolute divisions for 500 bucks. The things I would have done if they were $100,000. You kidding me? Yeah, that's Especially as a young guy. No, not as much. But as a young guy, that's a lot of money. Um, so congrats to those guys and good to see the these tournaments are coming up with a lot of frequency. I am curious how sustainable this type of thing is because it is a good chunk of money to put out for a promotion. I'm assuming there's also production cost and they have to fly people from all over the world and this and that. I wonder how much these dreams generate. Um because yeah, it is a good chunk of change. Hopefully I I want them to be very successful because then that keeps the ball rolling and uh it's fun to watch these things. This is again uh Saturday, you know, afternoon here in Vegas and you have some world class matches being put uh on on flow grappling. So, it's great to see and I I just hope we can keep seeing it. in particular. I know not too far along now. CGI I think is in August, so we're like a few months out from that. Uh that's going to be a exciting thing. Although they changed the format quite a bit since it's a team uh form at by weight class now. So, I'm still not 100% clear if this is kind of like uh how they did the old I forgot the name of the tournament now where like one guy stays in until he loses or is it just going weight class by weight class and uh because normally they don't define the weight classes that strictly. They normally have a weight limit and then you can like you know put however many people but this seems to be by weight class. It's a It's a a modified uh rule set from the original Quintet from my understanding. And I'm assuming this is also going to be in the the pit. So that's there's something else. Now, one last thing here that's interesting is that team New Wave doesn't seem to I don't think it's going to be New Wave anymore. They're rebranding. Uh, at least from what I seen from Gordon Ryan, they've been showing a lot that they got the mats in. They got their their place uh being uh built out. Um, they're going full out with suspension mats, springs. So, uh, it looks like it'll be a top class facility. But the video trailer that Gordon put was for King's Way. And when someone asked what's happened to New Wave, he's like, "Oh, this name's better." To me, my take on this is that Gordon is going to be the head coach. So, he's rebranding for his name. Of course, he goes by the king as his fight nickname. It would make sense to name it that way. I not sure what role then Danner has moving forward. I I feel like New Wave was probably more symbolic of uh John being the head coach and running the whole show. And to me, the rebranding the Kingsway, which is specific to Gordon Ryan, seems that now he's going to be the head coach and be running the show. I hope that isn't true because uh I think John is obviously such a great asset that I would continue I would like to continue to see him involved even if his capacity to do so is somewhat diminished. Uh but if that's the case you know hopefully whatever he decides to do next uh he is happy with and very successful. He's definitely deserved it for the amount of time that he's invested in the martial arts. I think a lot of people now see him that he's very well known and successful and there's a lot of tendency to hate on the guy. But having been around for quite a while and not as long as him and knowing that he wasn't famous or getting paid anything until like the last like 5 10 years, the man put his time in. All right. and he was in the trenches for a long long long long time before he got to get the the rewards from all the the the battling in the trenches, so to speak. So, I can't fault somebody like that. You can't hate on someone like that. Like, you know, and I've had different takes about him over the years. uh just excuse me uh from one point before that the guys were proven it's it was more like well this guy's never even competed before. It's hard to uh have somebody as a coach in something that he hasn't really done himself in the trenches. Of course he's trained or whatnot but training is very different than competing. They're two entirely different things. yet he somehow pulled it off. He clearly knows how to coach people. We've seen many athletes come from him and become superstars. So, he definitely has the eye and probably a decent amount of empathy to be able to figure out what people need. I know he's I think there's areas that he doesn't know and he's very honest about like sports psychology stuff, dieting, nutrition or like uh fitness outside of conditioning. He doesn't care about any of that stuff. His his focus, his specialization, his technique, which arguably he he knows more than anyone around because he's dedicated so much time to doing it. So, uh, but that being said, Gordon taking over as a head coach, and again, I'm just theorizing. I don't have any insight knowledge. I mean, I know these people, but I don't pry into their uh personal business here. I I am simply going by the the name rebrand. uh because new wave seems to me to be a when they moved to Austin they pretty much had to restart everything and uh but this was the new wave of competitors that were being built so it was more symbolic of a movement which I think was largely successful rebranded the king's way now it's it seems to me it's more about Gordon at this point and it's about his next journey I think again that he's probably not going to return to the mats. Uh based on what I'm seeing, it looks like he's doing a lot of stuff off the mats now. Uh and if so, you know, unfortunate, but understandable. And he's definitely earned it as far. He's done everything that you could as a competitor. He's won all the tournaments that he could have. So, there's not much really left for him to prove. He could still be going out there and just beating the same people, but I think he's made the statement and it's gonna be a hard path to follow or to the a hard record to beat that he's put out there. That's my take on it. Anyways, he's also a very good coach. You know, I did on the news bit how he was like goofing on Kynan and Nikki Rod about teaching them Mount Basics. He's very good at teaching. Uh I think he speaks more naturally in the sense that uh Donna is very verbboy and like talks a lot a little bit slower paced. Um it's not for everybody. I know uh people who tell me they listen to his videos and whatnot, they're listening to it double speed, two and a half speed to try to get through it. Uh Gordon has a similar level of insight, but is more fluid, a little bit easier, at least on the American mind, you know. So, I think uh it worked out pretty well. And I think Gordon also being the best grappler at least in Noi that we have seen to this day gives him even more credentials in like being the next superstar coach. Kind of like going a Dan Gable or a Kale Sanderson route where they achieved their goals relatively early. they didn't overstay their welcome and now they're becoming a coach to teach the next generation. So if if that's the case on one hand I'll be sad not to see him compete anymore because he was such a phenom but on the other hand I'm glad to see someone step out on their own terms early without being hurt or whatnot and being able to give back to the sport by producing better people. And I think he would agree that if he was able to create a champion that surpassed his record, it would be the ultimate victory for him. And that would be the next goal, right? As somebody who's as aid a competitor as he is, I imagine that would be where his mind is at. Like make someone better than me. Uh because that shows not only as an athlete was he the best, but as a coach he has the mind of being the best, too. And he's in a good position to do it.