BTG 80 - ADCC West Coast Trials Review

Hello and welcome to the Breaking the Guard podcast. I'm David Avalon and let's get to the news. I just came back from the ADC West Coast Trials and uh quite a phenomenal show. The level of talent was super high. So, I I'm just going to spend this episode talking about it. This is very fresh on my mind right now and my phone's making messages as well. So, um overall picture as far as a trends was once again leg locks were very hot. I mean just about every match in the opening rounds was a leg lock and I'm not just talking about heel hooks. There were straight ankle locks, you know, there was a blocks there, which is a very cool leg lock uh that is attributed to Abraham uh Leontaine, one of the guys from New Wave. I got to meet actually a few years back and he does the donkey guard or reverse close guard, however you want to call it. And he's able to get like a really unique toll hold. It's not quite a tow hold. It's a little bit different. And there were at least three finishes, including a finals finish using that lock. So, and knee bars. I mean, there were all sorts of leg locks. I was surprised because I know like sometimes leg locks are in and then they're out. They were very in on this trials. Uh lot of shots for takedowns. Um, the other thing I would say uh that was different was when it went to the final rounds, no leg locks, lots of chokes, uh, guildings and reneg chokes were the main threats. A lot of backtaking on on the finals and maybe not too surprising because the way the rule set changes where there's no pulling guard anymore. So it kind of uh ends up people shooting in and then it's getting sprawled out and the back gets a little more exposed. But uh that's uh overall pictures of what I was seeing. Now on to some specifics. Again, if you wanted to see the ACC trials and flow grappling, don't listen to me right now because I'm going to spoil everything for you. All right, but spoilers. First of all, in the women's division, uh, 55 kilos, Jasmine Rocha won. And I thought those was a a great matchup because it was a rematch. She was going, I believe, if I got her name right, Alex Enriquez, who was a really tough grappler, and they had faced each other before, and Alex had won the match. So, this is a rematch. And this time, Jasmine, excuse me, Jasmine got one over on her. Uh, a very good finish to the match. She got to the back, you know, towards the end of the match and was able to, she was very close to threatening with a rear naked choke, but she didn't quite get it, but she still managed to to pull out the W. And I always, you know, I think it must be an awesome moment for Vagna Roachcha, her father, who's a coach, who's also ADCC medalist multiple times. Uh, that must be one amazing experience for him. So, congrats to their family on the 65 kilogram division for women. Helena Craraver Cravar won and she is now the youngest athlete to enter the ACC World Championships. I believe now she's 17 maybe 16 somewhere between there. Phenomenal you know and she won with a submission uh very dominant throughout the whole tournament and uh she's wised up a bit. I know the last trials that I saw, she made like tactical errors by like pulling guard and getting a minus point and losing because of that. So, the more experience she's gotten, clearly she's sharpened up her game quite a bit. She's going to be a huge problem for anybody. And uh moving on, 65 kilogram uh for women plus rather was Elizabeth Mitravik. Uh she was going against Amanda Levy and it was actually a really good match. It went into overtime. They were battling back and forth, but unfortunately Levy got injured. Something happened where she misstepped and her knee just buckled. And you could see that she lost her balance and then she just ended up pulling guard and just tapping out because unfortunately her knee was way out. You could even see her knee was completely red. I'm not sure if she stepped and her knee hyperextended or she twisted, but it was definitely a knee issue from what I could see from Matt's side. So that's unfortunate. But I mean, congrats to Elizabeth because she was doing a great job. It was a 000 match either way. So, um, just unfortunate to see someone get hurt accidentally like that. Uh, moving on, 66 kilo division for men. You had DeAndre Corb win uh that division against Keith Cororan. A bit of an upset. Uh, and he actually won.60. Uh, so he clearly, you know, took control of the match pretty early. The thing that was interesting, maybe a little sad, was that uh DeAndre Corbett actually had to beat his brother in the semi-finals to advance. A little bit bittersweet, uh to have to beat your own brother off for a chance at the at the World Championships, but uh at least he made the most of it and got in. So, congrats. Andrew Tacket is a 77 kilogram and under. He went against Oliver Taza and uh this was a pretty heated match. I'm a little bummed because I was rooting for Oliver. I actually had him staying with me here and he was doing all this prep. So, I was really looking uh hoping for him to pull out the W. But uh Andrew looked amazing. He did a really good job. They had a lot. It was probably the most u contested and exciting match in my opinion because there was a lot of back and forth. There was zero stalling. I mean the these guys were both going at it. Attack it had some good opening exchanges and they would end up countering each other quite a bit. One of them would set up a motion. One would counter the one would counter and then they would just escape and no points. But the telling sequence was towards the end I think Andrew went for a shot uh and then Oliver counter shot got in a single and uh I believe if I remember correctly Andrew like uh rolled through like a bolo to get to the back and was able to secure the back mount get three points and despite Oliver's best efforts he could not just free himself in the back until the very again but uh it was a little too late and he wasn't able to recover the points but amazing job by Andrew Tacket really good gamer and you know uh congrats to him and in the 88 kilograms under his brother William Tacket ended up winning that again another cool story you know I have a brother that grapples so having both brothers qualify at the same time back to back again another awesome family moment and you could see they were all celebrating so uh what a amazing moment for the both of them. But William looked phenomenal and he was going against Andy Varela. Um who Oh no, I'm sorry. I got that one mixed up. Not Andy Varela. Uh that was actually Andrew Tack had beat Andy Varela to get into the finals which again another impressive win because Andy is just a a machine really tough grappler and uh he was able to to beat him as well. But William T won the 88 kilogram division under. Then there was the 99 kilogram division. Michael Pixley. This one was a little I don't know, a little iffy. Great match. And Pixley's super good wrestler. Uh the guy he was fighting at one point, they went back and forth like Pixley was dominant for most of the regulation of the match, getting a lot of near pass. Like in the beginning he did get a takedown to North South but you know it's no points in the beginning so that didn't matter and in the scoring period he nearly took his back a bunch of times but uh his opponent was able to fend him off but at the very end his opponent actually took him down and he was trying to switch to come back to like counter it but he was on his butt for like at least 5 seconds and no score was given to his opponent and the buzzer hit right there. So, a little iffy. I'm not sure cuz I know what I read from the my understanding of the rules is that if someone hits their butt or their back from a standing position and is held for at least 3 seconds, it's a takedown unless there's a submission attempt going on. And as much as I love switches, a switch is not a submission attempt on its own. Uh I mean, it has to be really deep before you get threatened. like the reverse arm lock style pressure, you know, and uh it wasn't there in my I mean, at least from my eyes. So, I'm a little curious in that, but in the overtime, Pixely did enough to get the W and he ended up becoming the champion. And then finally, one of the more interesting uh matchups in the 99 kilogram division, Mike Perez won that division. And if you know who Mike Perez is, he's probably about 180 190 lbs and he was fighting a mountain of a man from B Team. Uh his name slipped me at the moment, but he must have been at least 240 plus and maybe a foot and a half taller than him. So it was a a real size mismatch, a David versus Goliath moment. But uh Mike controlled that fight to be honest. uh he had the better bites, had a deep guillotine at one point, was able to stuff all the shots uh and get into front headlocks and uh he made the big guys look bad that day. You know, he tore through that division and earned his spot in any killer division. So, kudos to him, you know. I mean, that's tough. going against guys that skilled that much bigger than you is uh impressive and he shows his level of technique was able to overcome the size disadvantage and as well his explosiveness u so again congrats to Mike Perez on pulling that off. It'll be interesting to see who they match him up in the world championships because it's going to be a hard run but at least he only has to go through four guys instead of like the seven or or eight that they had to do through the trials, you know. So now uh those are the eight uh new trials qualifiers and uh man the talent pool is really deep. You know when I look at the type of matches that are happening in these trials uh they a lot of them could easily be world championship fights, right? So it's a it's a bit of a bummer that some of these guys don't get the the shot to be at the world championships, you know, and I know some of them. Of course, I have some familiar attachment to him, but it's only going to get harder. You know, I feel like the the World Championships, especially these trials, are just going to be so tough that to get through them, you're going to have to be a monster. And uh some of the old-timers that are hanging around um or people that were getting in from previous tournaments I think are going to be in for some rude awakenings when they face these young lions because they are hungry and very skilled. I do think that the leg lock game is still going to be a big thing. Now, a lot of people who are wellversed know how to nullify it, and we did see quite a bit of that, and a lot of people trying to counter the leg lock game by doing bolos and going for the back. So, there's a lot of tumbling going on. You know, I'm not a big bolo guy. Uh I consider myself a good leg locker, but uh I'm not playing the crazy leg locking game quite as much as some of these people are who are just going to firefights, just trading leg locks back and forth. I'm always somebody who likes a one-sided beatd down. So, if I'm going to get into a leg entanglement, it's going to be all on my terms and not giving anything away to my opponent. That's why I like Kimora so much because Kimoras are pretty one-sided when you control them well. But, uh, overall, a great show, uh, and makes me more excited for the World Championships coming up later this year. Uh, and I'll look forward to seeing once they finalize the brackets as well. You know, I was going to try to do a prediction of uh these trials brackets, but when there's 256 man brackets, I'm like, there's no way I can make an intelligent uh informed decision because there's just so many people here, you know, and not everybody's seated or ranked yet. And all because they're not seated doesn't mean they're any they're not good. It's just like there's just too many people. So, but when they do the 16 man for the world championships that I I would like to make predictions on and see how they come through. Uh but I will say this as far as you know overall message of the day what I found watching these matches to still be very very important which should come to no surprise is conditioning and a lot of these guys conditioning level was pretty fantastic. Uh but on the heavier side of guys, you could definitely see some of them started to slow down quite a bit in the later rounds. Uh they started giving stuff away. Uh some of them making tactical errors. So uh even without all the technique and the strength, to me, especially in these long form tournaments, stamina is king. And if you have disparity of skill or disparity of strength, utilizing stamina as a weapon is a fantastic way to equalize uh the match and put the odds in your favor. Uh so in the finals, we didn't see too much of it because I think most of these guys who made it to the finals were already stamina kings because they already went through at least six matches to get there. So, you're not going through six matches without having a serious gas tank. But leading up to it, I did see quite a few people who were getting head snapped and tied and snapped straight to the ground after being like really fatigued or just getting sprawled out on a shot and not having anything to pop back up or, you know, peek out. Uh, so if you're one that's a little slow in the technique game or maybe you're slow, like you're not that fast, if you can wear someone out, you can definitely take advantage of of their conditioning and use that as a weapon. I know I've talked about this before, but I have used that quite a bit myself in my career when I was facing bigger guys or people who are a bit more technical and made it a scrap instead of a chess match. and that can definitely sway things in your favor. But these final matches were all very technical. Um, and they were a very good watch. I'm going to have to go through them a few times to give you guys some more. But again, leg locks are still in, guys. So, if you were hoping that there would be a season of no leg locks, sorry to tell you that it's not the case. But uh back taking is always in and it was again in this finals a very important factor. I I believe at least two of the matches were won by back takes if not three. My memory is fading me a little bit now. Um but yeah, great show. Again, I'm super excited to see the next one. And I'll cut it short here because I'm starving. Got some smoked ribs and I'm dig into those now. But I'll see you guys next week. And uh hope you guys had a wonderful Easter.