BTG 64 - Break Him

Hello, welcome to the Breaking the Guard podcast with your host, me, David Avalon. And on today's episode, we're going to talk a lot about the Fight Pass Invitational number five, which just took place yesterday on on Sunday. and I'll talk about some of the results and the trends particularly with how to break somebody in a grappling match or in a MMA fight. But uh before we get into the fight pass invitation, I do want to talk about one thing with Kalo Rantry. He fought in the UFC uh last fight night of the year uh against Anthony Smith. dropped him. Uh, and it was a really uh, unusual thing where he had picked up a giant hammer fist and just held it like he had a hammer and he was going to swing and kill Anthony Smith because Smith was done, right? He his legs became jelly and then he couldn't stand. He was completely there. And it was almost like Kalo was holding that hammer fist just to let the ref know like if you don't stop this, I'm going to be bringing the pain, you know, and fortunately the ref did stop it. Uh, and that was a real iconic moment. I think that that's going to be me'd quite a bit in the future. Uh, but it was also good sportsmanship because he could have really drilled and, you know, destroyed Anthony there. So, good win for him. And then he now he breaks into the top 10. He's been one of those guys who's been really scary for a long time. I mean, uh, his kickboxing is pretty nasty. You know, he's got a lot of power. So, if he lines up everything just right, you know, he could be a contender for that title. All right, so let's go ahead and move into the fight pass invitational. As you can see, I'm a little bit sick. I'm just getting over it now. I was supposed to be there live and uh I ended up having to watch it from home, which is a bummer. But uh a lot of good action that took place. The what was interesting was the trend in this wasn't like a couple past fight past invitationals where you would see like Big Dan hitting that uh dog bar from a half guard or uh Mason Fowler hitting arm bars and triangle chokes and all these submissions which are like more like what I consider like quick catches. Whereas in this five pass invitational, it was more classical jiu-jitsu where people were being broken down over time and then giving up the tap, right? Um, now if we go through the individual results, the first fight of the night was Andy Varela versus Achilles Roa. Achilles is the son of Vagnner Roacha. He's 17 years old, but he's already a big guy as it is. And um interesting matchup. Uh not as much submissions as I thought there would be. I both of those guys usually go pretty hard to catch things. And uh I figured it would be like a submission trade-off, but it turned out to be kind of a a more of a stale affair. Not a lot of submissions. I can't recall any significant ones. Um, it's some interesting scrambles. Like the very first thing that was kind of like Andy went for a throw by and then instantly off the throw by Achilles Graby rolled out of it. It was like a really quick read which was kind of neat. But other than that, not much happened. Now, one thing I have to say, they did change the rule set. Before they were doing EBI rolls, basically um regular time period, no points, no score, no nothing, and then overtime EBI starts, you know. So they opted for what they called hybrid ADCC rules where they said the first the regulation period there's no points but there are negative points and they will give two warnings and then they'll give a minus point for passivity um or not progressing in the action and uh the overtime would be a scored 80CC style overtime. time with those minus points traveling of course. So, um it was curious to see it because they turned out to give out a lot of minus points. I mean it was an unprecedented amount of minus points. Uh I think one match uh they gave out seven minus points. So imagine I mean it was excessive. I know they were trying to perhaps do it more wrestling style, which to try to push the fighters, but at times it just seemed like they were just giving them out just to give them out. Uh, and most of these guys who end up I think there was very few people who actually scored points. It was just all minus points. So weird. However, it did seem that the people who were awarded the victory were the actual winner. So, at least uh there was some justice there. But let's keep going. So, Achilles ended up winning that match. It looked like Andy had the upper hand in the beginning and then when they went into the overtime, it looked like he faded a little bit and Achilles um started taking control of the action. And I think Achilles, if I recall, he finished like in just top side control or close to being passed, but he Let me actually see before I just talk out of out of turn. Let's see. Yeah, he ended up winning by the guard pass. Yeah, so they both had minus points and then Achilles won by two to minus one. Right. Uh the next match was Hannah Goldie versus Amanda Matzah. Uh this is interesting because they they both had come in with armbar submissions and uh sure enough they went hunting for arm bars right away particularly uh Hannah and she was going for the top knot repeatedly and ultimately she got it and was able to finish an unconventional arm bar rather than what you would think just a regular arm bar here. She actually pushed it off to the side. Um, so that was pretty interesting. And um, the next match was Aaron Wilson versus Christian Guusman. I didn't know much about either of these two gentlemen, but Aaron Wilson was in control of the match for the majority of the the bout and ultimately he also was able to secure Armbar victory. So, uh, and I would say these bottom two, these last two arm bars, if I look through the rest, these were the only ones that I would consider like they were catches, right? Like they got opponent was fresh. They they weren't broken yet. They just got caught, right? The rest of these were broken, right? Okay, this is why I was talking about like mental will because we have back Roachcha versus Fidar Sylio and you know Roachcha's very tough you know he likes to push a hard pace he plays rough and this was no exception he was really wearing on Victor and I believe it got into the overtime and you could tell that Victor was done and uh Vagner was was reading seeing that and it's like blood in water, you know, for a shark. And he was just attacking. Eventually, he got to the back and from the back, he was able to pressure the choke. And again, this was one of like a battle of attrition there. Obviously, it was a key part of the strategy was just to wear on on Victor and ultimately go into one of uh Vagner's strong areas, which is the back mount and finish with a very naked choke. Uh following match was Janatus Gracie versus Nikki Ryan. This is one where uh again was decided by minus points, right? So uh they didn't get that many in comparison to some that you'll see later, but um this was like a minus two to minus one. Jonatus Gracie won. Uh it just seemed Gracie had the better wrestling and Nikki said he wanted to show his wrestling, but really didn't get a good opportunity to. Donatis was physically the bigger of the two and uh he was able to control most of the action and again not many uh submission attempts from either party. I would have thought that Nikki Ryan would have thrown up more leg lock attempts or whatnot. Didn't seem uh that he did. Whether or not they were available is another question entirely, but it was curious. It was just all points affair and a very positionally based uh battle. The next one was Victor Hugo versus Daniel Menaceoule, Big Dan. And um this was interesting because it looked like Big Dan had the edge in the regulation at least. Uh he was able to score all the takedowns. he was um able to sweep and get on top, but when they went into the overtime, it looked like he was getting tired and uh Victor Hugo was still in the game, but even it was only until the very maybe last minute or so, Big Dan was on top. uh he was losing by a minus point and so he needed to try to get that point back and then he ended up getting swept into the mount and the moment he got swept into the mount he could see all the fight just left him and he pretty he tapped to an Americana from the mount didn't really try to hard to escape it I think he was just mentally done and this just goes to show like from again he's even though he's like 23 you Uh, I mean, and he's competed in the world championships a few times. He's still very green. And it's funny because I was talking to my wife about this and she's like, "How can he like break spirit like that? He's such a big guy, you know, and I I told her the reality is many big guys are more cowardly than the smaller guys." And the reason being is that if you're a giant, and Big Dan is definitely a giant, it's very rare for someone to be able to physically challenge you, right? Like it just doesn't happen. Uh so whenever you face an opponent, they're usually much smaller than you. So it's it's relatively easy affair, right? But when you face another big guy or a bigger guy or just a small guy but with a lot of heart and tenacity, it's kind of scary uh because you're not used to being challenged by like a valid opponent. So, I have found from my experience that it's usually the bigger guys that have issues with heart and not so much the smaller guys because the smaller guy by def by nature is always having to be brave because they're always fighting someone bigger than them. They're always fighting someone stronger than them. They're, you know, and so they have to get used to it and it's kind of like the Napoleon syndrome, right? But like in in a good way. Whereas you get very brave because you're used to having to be brave because every confrontation for you is one that requires bravery. But when you're 300 lb facing 150 lb guy, bravery is not required, right? You just need to smash. Uh so uh he definitely has to do some more work in with his spirit which seems to be because when you when I've seen big Dan lose it's never because he's technically uh deficient or he wasn't fast enough or strong enough or had enough stamina. It's always something mental whether it was poor strategic um decisions or just like this he is mentally broken right so uh you might think oh this is easier to fix but it's usually easier to fix a technical deficiency than a mental deficiency like you really have to dig at the source of it and unroot it and I know they do a lot of things for toughening like they'll have them being around the whole time just getting smothered and smashed and then fight the next round. So they're they try to mimic that, but it's not the same, right? Um it's kind of like a finishers uh remorse where you get very close to finishing somebody with the arm lock something and then they escape and there's a moment of time where the guy going for the submission is just a little broken. They're like, "Fuck, I almost had this." You know? Um, and that's a moment of weakness that they could have. So, you have to frame yourself mentally in such a way that you're always um game like if you don't if you didn't finish something, you did some damage, right? Or you made progress to getting to that finish because that opponent gave you a position. But, uh, mentally he has to, uh, strengthen himself a bit. But again, he's still very young, so he's still got a lot of time. The next Mason Fowler and Heisen Rita, Mason uh is pretty phenomenal, right? And especially as Gordon pointed out in the commentary in UFC events, he is undefeated as far as I know because he did a lot of submission underground events. He's won all of them. He's beat Craig Jones multiple times. He's beating everybody that they put him against. And now in the five pass invitational, he won the last uh heavyweight division and then he's he ended up beating Heisen Rita pretty easily. Uh ended up catching in with a Kimora. And this is another one where he kind of broke him. All right. Like what was interesting is that Mason opted for a collar tie game from the standing position against you know the giraffe excuse me of a man Rita which I'm not sure how he pulled it off because when you're facing someone that tall it's usually pretty hard to enforce a collar tie game because they're literally on top of you. So, one, normally you're going to have to be reaching really high, which exposes your whole lower half, right? Um, and two, usually since they're on top, their collie is going to be much heavier. Um, so I I still don't get how he was able to do that, whether Rita just didn't uh respect the ties because he did let them sit there. You know, that's one thing that it's a very simple wrestling tactic which you should never allow, which is don't let your opponent put their hand on your head. Because even though this seems like it's not a big deal, I'm pulling on it. And if you know how to hang your weight on that now, it's like maybe 70 80 pounds of weight on the back of your neck, which doesn't really do well with that type of weight, and you just wear it out. And once your neck uh extension gets worn out, now head snaps just destroy you. And like it just tires you out completely because it's like the weak link of the chain, you know. Uh and that seemed to be the case here because Mason uh controlled his neck for a big part of the bout. And uh he eventually took him down. I forget with what takedown he got him with, but once he took him down, it was pretty uh done deal. you know, he started working guard passing passes guard, got to side control, and then was camping out from side control for a while. He was either looking for like a a side triangle because he was playing like north south quite a bit, but I thought he was looking for the kimora and sure enough, he did get that kimora, ripped it pretty quick, and uh that was done. But Rita wasn't really mounting any defense once he got past. I think he knew he was dead in the water. And then uh Mason called out Gordon Ryan which was supposed to be his original opponent and Gordon accepted. They did a face off and all that. So uh that'll be good that it's the one match that Gordon hasn't uh had yet and they've been trying to do it. So it would be good to see it. I'm not sure how that would work out. I mean surprisingly Mason's pretty heavy. He was 237 for that bout. So I know a lot of people say Gordon's a lot bigger. Well, not really. Gordon, I think, weighed in at 223 the last time he competed. So, if anything, Mason has a weight advantage, which is kind of unreal, but if you look at Mason's legs, you can probably see why. He's kind of built like me, which is got giant tree trunk legs. Uh uh. So, then the next match, Nick Rodriguez versus UI Moyes. This was a one that almost could have been a catastrophe, and I'll explain why. Nick Rodriguez dominated from start to finish regulation overtime. He scored the ankle pick early on u pass his guard mounted him pass his guard mounted him yet somehow picked up a minus point and since Uricia Moyes was like bottom mounted and you know in very compromised positions the whole time he didn't rack up any minus points so it 0 to minus1 going into the overtime. And you know, the commentators were also saying like if Yuri Moyes ends up winning this match by a minus point, it's going to invalidate this rule set because clearly the better grappler wasn't winning. And it only came in about the final minute uh because well I think it got tied up. Yuri Moyes got a minus point so it was minus one minus one and ultimately Nikki Rod got another taked down wasn't scored because his ADCC rules in the regular in the overtime so he turtled but then he was able to finally stick them out and once he got them out he got four and then uh that was all she wrote. So Nick Rodriguez ends up winning uh three to minus two. So very good performance for him. Yuri Samoy is a he's a two-time AC is the absolute champion and he's the current reigning uh absolute champion but um and this is a rematch where I believe Yuri had beaten Nick Rodriguez. So a good rematch victory for him and he's clearly coming to the top of the heavyweight competitors when I'll talk about that in a little bit. The next and final match was Nicholas Miragali versus Philippena. And this was definitely a match of breaking somebody. Now, uh they started off and again Merali was pushing the entire time and he was always moving pan back. Uh going for a lot of single legs. At one point I think he tried to do a counter with Chima against Pana when Pena tried to single leg him but it was a lot of forward pressure that he was applying and I do believe they he took him down with a single leg and then yes he did and then um got on top a lot of guard passing pressure. Pana is very good at defending his guard by using that um 50/50 to take take their weight off of him. But um it started you could see towards the end of the regulation things were not going well for Penna. is starting to get fatigued and I I think it might have been like minus one to minus two negative points for or zero to minus one for the pepa right what got silly was in the overtime Mary was still pouring on the pressure and Penna was clearly fading bad he was getting run out of bounds multiple times One of them um Margali had a single leg picked it up high and the out of bounds line let's say was here. Pana crawled and threw himself out of bounds as if like Margali dumped him which he didn't. And like I mean he threw him and you remember this is on the stage so it's probably about this high you know falling down uh just to avoid the single leg and uh as a result they restart him in that position and Pana didn't want to restart. He kept fighting it was about a minute of struggle and Maragali is calling him out saying he's just getting rest time you know because he's exhausted. The ref gave him a minus point just for the refusal to enter the position. he ultimately did and escaped right away. So seemed to be just because it was a easily defensible position. Um but at that point uh he was minus 6. They gave him six he ended up getting up to minus 7. So he got six minus points in the span of like three or four minutes. Now he was stalling a lot. Uh but for grappling terms this seems a bit excessive. Uh so it it was pretty wild you know because I mean short of disqualifying what are you going to do? But anyhow, eventually um Margali gets him to the ground, gets to his back and body triangle isolates an arm, traps it. And at that point, Penna tapped relatively easy at that. He he was done, right? He just needed to be put in a bad spot to give him a reason to tap out, but he was mentally broken at that point. So, this is why I said it's like classical jiu-jitsu here where, you know, you're just pointing a lot of pressure and letting the opponent compromise themselves and giving them a good reason to tap, right? Nobody wants to tap just to tap, but you give them a really good reason. You know, you you brutalize them a bit, you got on their back, you got a strong position, they'll be happy to be out of there, right? So now when we look, we have really as a result of these matches, you got three really solid heavyweights. You got Margalli, you got Nick Rodriguez, and you got Mason Fowler, right? You could say Victor Hugo as well, although I don't think he's up there personally, but I could be wrong. these they should probably do another bracket and have these guys do like a heavyweight tournament or since they're already doing Mason Fowler versus um Gordon Ryan, it would be a good matchup to see Nick Rodriguez go against Maragali. We haven't seen that one yet. Um that would be interesting. It would also be a good measure for Maragali. Uh Nick Rodriguez has been the silver medalist in the heavyweight division every year. So, uh, conceivably if he can beat him, then well, that shows that he would be the champion. If we we did BJ math, which we know doesn't always work out that right, but it would be a good match to put together. So, I would say definitely that would be one to do. Now, as for the the topic of the day, how to break somebody, if you watched Margari versus Filipe Penna or you watched uh I would say Vagnner Rocha versus Victor Searo, it's a good recipe for how to do that. You just have to constantly pressure somebody. This is something that I did early in my career because I wasn't technically strong. I I had a lot of stamina and a lot of drive and a lot of heart, but technically I was pretty weak early in my career. So, the way I won was through unrelenting pressure. And you need a few things to be able to do that. one, you need cardio. If you don't have the gas tank to be able to push somebody the entire match and basically keep the match at your pace, right? What you don't want is somebody to take over the pace because then you lose the pressure game. You need to be the one in control of the pace and being able to apply it. Normally, this is going to mean being the top guy, right? It's kind of not impossible, but it's usually more difficult to put that type of pressure off your back. not impossible, but uh it's definitely difficult and definitely more risky because if you're going to be putting a lot of pressure off your back, that's probably going to imply that you're opening your guard and you're attacking for submissions, uh making you more likely to be in a compromised position where your opponent could pass or advance their position. So, uh, if you're trying to really pressure somebody, usually you're going to see it dump from the top or from a standing position, hanging on the head, a lot of faints, um, making them defend a lot. You You want to put your opponent on the back foot. If the opponent is moving into you, it's going to be harder to have that type of strategy of getting them to mentally break. But when you're the one putting all the pressure, you're initiating all the the scramles uh and you are constantly showing up there and you have the drive and your instinct, your motivation is to break this guy. You're not thinking, I'm going to finish this really quickly and catch him in the submission. If you think that then you're going to have a problem when that doesn't happen. And this is kind of a also a guy who thinks this who literally said this was Big Dan. That's he said his goal is to finish as quickly as possible and get out of there. So what happens when you don't fulfill that? And again quickly is relative but I already imagine for most people you would think the first five minutes you don't get that. You failed your goal. Now you're in uncharted territory, right? You don't want to say those type of things to yourself. Instead, I would say, "I'm going to break this guy, pour unrelenting pressure on him until he just wants out of there, and then I'll give him a good reason to get out of there." Right? When you have that type of mindset, it can be five minutes, it could be 35 minutes, you can still be able to pour on that pressure to get that victory. Um, but if you're hoping just for the quick finish, like I said, it's a very different strategy mentally. And that's kind of a all for nothing type of approach in my opinion. You want to be more sound in being able to wear someone out. And it doesn't take that long. Like Mason Fowler did in regulation, right? I think if I recall it was probably around seven minutes or so and that match was over. Uh so you can break someone pretty fast. If you put a lot of pressure on them, they'll break pretty fast, right? Uh also this depends on the opponent's toughness, right? The tougher they are, the harder they're going to be to break. And then you might have to go into overtimes or whatnot. And that is hard to determine. You know, that's on an individual basis. Uh but you if you apply enough pressure to somebody, you can't break them. And the best way to break somebody is to put them in the position they're most uncomfortable in. Right? So if you know like this guy's great in this, right? For example, if I was going to try to break Nikki Rodriguez from a standing position, it would be extremely difficult, right? He's very comfortable on his feet. That's where he likes to be. I'm gonna have a hard time doing that. But if just for sake of argument, say he is very uncomfortable being in half guard. If I could keep him under half guard on his flat on his back for like three or four minutes and just like, you know, driving my shoulder into his chin or whatever, I'm going to be in a good position to break him down. Right? Again, assuming he's uncomfortable being there. This is a hypothetical, but hopefully you understand my point. If you know a position your opponent does not like being and you can force him and keep him there for a long time, that will go a long way towards breaking that guy. All right. Again, typically most people don't like being in the really compromised positions like being back mount or mount or whatever. But, uh, any position that they're just even slightly uncomfortable with is going to give you much better results than a position that they're neutral with or they even favor, right? So, you got to find the weak points in their game and try to put them in there long enough. Uh because again breaking somebody is not just physical, it's mental, right? If you physically fatigue them mentally, they will fold. But if you could put them in a position that they perceive as very stressful for them, you're going to have much better results, right? And as a result, they're going to tend to panic more and exert more physically to get out of this bad position that they don't like being. Just think of like someone who's claustrophobic, right? you really wanted to wear someone out who's claustrophobic. You stick them in a tight closet and just lock them in there and they'll just, you know, freak themselves out that they're doing the work for you, right? You just have to put them in that place. That is what you're trying to do when you're trying to break somebody. You want to treat them like they're claustrophobic. You just got to find a closet to put them in, right? Maybe that, like I said, that closet's bottom half guard. Maybe it's, you know, bottom side control. And maybe it's a 50/50, right? Whatever that position is, you know, whatever their closet is, throw them in there and let them suffer and you let them cook there for long enough and they'll be begging to get out of there, right? As you can see, you know, like the the Peneta match is a good example. The, you know, the Victor Seario versus Vagnar Roachcha was another good example of somebody that, you know, they just tapped like, "Okay, get me out of here. I'm done." All right. Um, so that's the goals, right? If we could just really sum it down. I want to mentally break somebody. And like I said, this not the only way to win, you know, like like I said, the first two finishes of the day were arm bars and those were catches, right? Like opponent was fresh. They weren't broken. They just got caught. They put themselves in a bad spot and boom, it's done. And that's always good, you know, but against a very tough opponent, it's probably going to be difficult to get that quick catch. Not impossible, but difficult. But what you can rely on is trying to break them. All right? And that's like a more sound uh philosophy, especially if you're doing one-off matches. If you have like eight matches for the day, then you might, you know, thinking, well, grinding out eight people is going to be tough, right? uh stamina wise, but if you're doing a super fight or oneoff, grinding someone out is always an option, right? Uh so it's a strategy, like I said, I've used many times. Um the one that stands out the most is when I beat Zanji Hibro and ADC Absolute 2007. I went into the match with a clear goal of wearing him out. I I knew he was bigger than me, stronger than me, more technical than me, right? So, I was like, the only way I'm going to win this is by wearing him out. I knew I would have an upper hand, the wrestling, and I knew I could put a lot of pressure from the top position. And uh it became a bit of both. He kind of avoided the wrestling early on. Uh, I think I scored an early taked down in the no score period and then I put a lot of pressure for the top and it was just lots of top pressure the whole time, you know, so didn't get any scores, but I was the one dictating the pace and that match went 25 minutes, three overtimes. Uh, but I knew it was going to go deep. So, uh, that was the the strategy going in there, you know, and when you're facing a tough guy, that's what you can expect, right? And it's a, like I said, a strategy that you can that can be counted on. If you know the positions you're strong at, the positions your opponent's weak at, you can utilize this to great effect. So, how to break somebody. All right, hopefully that comes into use, right? Um, and uh you guys let me know what you think about that. I'll see you guys next week. Hopefully my voice will be back to normal. Take care.