So, this past weekend was Five Grappling's first event!
On Friday night they held a seminar at the venue with jiu jitsu legends Marcelo Garcia and Xande Ribeiro. Also at the seminar was 27 time mundial champion Renato Laranga! On a semi related note, a super fight between Marcelo and Renato was announced on Saturday.
I wasn't able to attend the seminar, but from what I heard it was quite excellent. Marcelo and Xande have fairly different styles and body types so it was great for people to get their different perspectives on the techniques and see what kind of changes you need to make to have things work for different body types and styles. A couple of my team mates, and some of my friends from other schools attended and had nothing bad to say about it. I was originally registered, but had to withdraw from it because of my shoulder. I'm pretty bummed I missed it.
My perspective of the competition is a bit skewed because I was working the entire day. My job was to sort out 1/2 the fighters into queues for their mats runner. It was a chaotic job, that left me with tired feet, a sore shoulder, no voice and no patience by the end of the day. I'm not sure I would do the job again, but it was interesting anyway. There were some issues that were out out fives control.that made the job more difficult then it needed to be and I think at their next event it will be much easier and less stressful.
The event started at 10am with a rules meeting. They basically went over the major differences between the five grappling ruleset and the ibjjf rules that everyone is used to. This was a really good idea, because not everyone reads the rules of the competitions they enter and it probably saved the table workers and referees some grief from the coaches. That being said, moat of the adults were not at the venue yet, so they did not benefit from the meeting.
The first portion of the day, which was gi kids, women, and masters took longer to get through then planned. This was mostly because the competitors didn't listen to the instructions from the meeting, and the runners and myself. They would not stay in the bullpen, when they were coming up, or enter the exit and go straight to their mat, and all sorts of other, incorrect behaviour that left us looking for fighters and waiting around. The other issue was that the speaker and Mic setup in the bullpen did not get loud enough and the speaker was at the back of the bullpen, when it should have been at the front, near the warm-up area so the announcer could call people from the bullpen admin area without setting off lots of feedback.
The system for the draws was pretty sweet, each match got a number, so if you paid attention to your mat, and kept an eye on things, you would always have a pretty good idea of when you would be up next. This is not a new thing for competitions in other sports like wrestling and judo, but it is new to jiu jitsu, so there will always be a learning curve. I hope its a system that is adopted across the board by all the various promotions because it really is a great way of doing things.
So, the super fights ended up starting later them scheduled, and running before all the kids/masters/womens nogi was complete. This was a bit annoying but not the end of the world. After the super fights things got back on track quickly and I believe the tournament was wrapped up by 6 or 630 pm.
The superfights were all great fights. There were 2 submissions I believe, Thomas Beach won by submission(sadly I missed this fight because we haf a mini meeting during it) and Michael Lierra Jr submitted Dainis Ng.
Alison vs Sijara was a very entertaining match. They both almost got a kimura and if there had been a few more seconds Alison would have likely score some more points to take the lead. Sijara won 5-2.
In the main event Darson and Gianni double guard pulled but Gianni came up for 2. The rest of the match was Darson playing Dlr and Gianni trying to pass. This may sound boring but it was actually quite entertaining.
The medals and belts for the divisions were really nice looking. They even had kids size belts for the advanced divisions. The award presentations were pretty delayed for the first half of the day, but I believe once they got going they handed them out as things went along Hopefully next time they will give them out as the divisions complete, since people had places to go and things to do, it was a holiday weekend after all. They gave out sweet gear bags to every competitor, and also gave a bag, with a certificate for hatashita international to the competitors who their matches by submission. I like this idea and I hope it becomes more popular.
All in all it was a successful event, and or their first tournament it was more than acceptable. There are some kinks to work out, but they almost all revolve around the draw system and should be fairly easy to resolve. I'm working on writing out some tips and fixes for the promoters that were apparent from my end, and I am certain that the next event will be even better!
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