Grappling Industries: Summer Havoc July 20th Recap

This past Saturday was Grappling Industries fourth foray into the GTA.  The event was held at Ryerson University in downtown Toronto and had somewhere around 300 competitors.

They've gotten the format down pat, and it's all very smooth these days.  They have weigh ins on Friday night, and Saturday morning with gi weigh ins closing 15 minutes before the start of the competition and nogi weigh ins closing 15 minutes before the start of the nogi.

Some of the things that were excellent about the day:

• Started on time ran on / ahead of schedule and was pretty much done by 4pm.  Most mats were done by 3:00pm
• The registration / weigh in process was quick and easy.  Especially compared to past events where there was huge lines for registration due to the OGA paperwork.
• They gave away 8 trips to big IBJJF tournaments. Now, these 8 trips were not worth as much as some of the ones they have given out in the past, but with 8 of them, I'm quite certain the total value was the most they've given out.
• People are starting to understand the system and are at their mats ready to go,  making the whole day smoother.
• There was a good size warm up area
• There were more masters out then at previous events, a trend I hope continues.
• The white belt ladies division was a decent size, and very competitive.
• The blue and up ladies -141 was the biggest I've ever seen.  

Some things that were less then excellent about the day:

• my shoulder really hurt by the end, I was careful with it, making the fighters switch sides to raise their hand and stuff, but it still got sore.
• I had competitors from the mat beside me come onto my mat 3 or 4 times, twice they ran into me and/or my fighters.  The mat area or safety area NEEDS to be made bigger somehow.
• Yacinta was the only one in the +141 blue and up divisions, so she didn't get too many fights.  She still got to fight the winner of the -141 for the trips though, so at least she got some fights(and prizes).
• at least 3, and I think 4 referees who were scheduled to work did not show up on very short, or no notice.  This lead to us having less breaks, and the promoters having to use backups.
• Coaches and Athletes STILL don't know the rules.  Seriously people.  RTFM.  
• I got yelled at for not giving sweep points when someone reversed side control
• I got yelled at for DQ'ing  for a heal hook.
• MANY competitors had no idea what a knee reap was and that they were doing it
• I got yelled at for allowing white belts to ankle lock. (News flash. they are LEGAL)
• The medics did an pretty good job. It's a hard job. But there were several times they had to be called multiple times to get their attention.  Perhaps they need to have more so that they don't end up attending to to many athletes and not being able to keep an eye on the floor.
• There were several times throughout the day when fighters were called a whole bunch of times, and they weren't ever at the event.  It would be good for the organizers to figure out a way to quickly/easily go through the weigh-in list and cross reference the draws and make notes of who never showed up.  This would save some headaches for the table works.
• They use IBJJF GI weight classes, but allow you to weigh in with out your gi on. I like that they use the standard weight classes, but I think it would be better if they used the nogi weight classes because they don't have a weight allowance built into them.

Pura had a pretty small team out to the event. With it being summer and all not a lot of people are around on weekends.   Here is how everyone did:

• Brayden: 4-0 in Gi, all wins by armbar  for Gold! This was his first Nogi competition and he had a great showing winning silver.
• Kyle:  His first competition and he went 3-1 in Gi and I believe 2-2 in nogi.  Great work for his first time out hopefully he is hooked now :)
• Eric: 2-1 and one default win in Gi.  This was his first time back competing in a very long time so it was good for him to work off the ring rust and now he is ready to really kick ass at the Toronto Open.
• Stephen went 3-2 looking like a beast.
• Jon went 2-2 in gi, putting 1 guy to sleep (that's 10 now).  He entered in the advanced for nogi, which was a bit silly,  and had a bit of a bad time against the killers David Mosleh, and Arther.
• Alasdair went 2-2 in gi.  winning silver.
• Greg had a rough day, going 0-2 against a younger, larger guy.  He did some great things in his matches though, and is steadily making his way down to super heavy where he is going to ruin a lot of peoples days.

The competition medal results can be found on the grappling industries website.  Pictures from the event can be found on their facebook page and videos will be up on youtube soon.

On a completely unrelated note, I should get the results from the MRI today.  I won't really know exactly what they mean, but it's progress.  I have an appointment with Dr. Levy to go over them on August 7th.  It's been pretty annoying the last few days.  One day it will feel fine, the next it will feel awful.  I imagine it's probably because it feels ok, so I move it more, and that pisses it off.

I guess that is all for now.  The IBJJF Toronto Open is in a week and a half, registration closes this Friday. So get on that.  It should be a pretty excellent event.   We are heading to Montreal for the Grappling Industries event on August 17th as well and after that is another grappling industries event in Toronto, and then the OJA GTA Classic both in September.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention this!!

There are some women's open mats coming up in the Province as well!   This is pretty awesome, and I wish I could participate in them.  You ladies should all check them out.  

Check out this facebook group for details and information on ladies jiu jitsu in ontario.

THIS SUNDAY in Toronto
Women's ONLY OPEN MAT on Sunday July 28th at 10am at Action & Reaction MMA.

August 25th in London:
See the facebook event for details.

OJA Sub Only July 13th 2013 (recap)

Today was the OJAs first sub only tournament.  They were supposed to have one in the fall(i think, maybe winter), but it didn't happen, trouble with finding a venue, scheduling, and who knows what else made it not happen.  It seemed like this one wasn't going to happen either.  It wasn't announced/confirmed util about 6 weeks before it, and information and details were slow to come out and sparse at best.

It was small, probably only about 50 competitors, but the ones that showed up fought hard and fought well.  There were no ladies fights (other then a couple kids who were in mixed divisions), and no brown or black belts.   The biggest division I think had 5 or maybe 6 competitors in it.  The ladies mostly showed up last weekend to the mat militia sub only show, it was free, and announced way before this one.

The tournament started on time, and ran on schedule and ahead of schedule.   There was 6 mat areas, but we probably could have finished the tournament just as quickly on 4.  There was a lot of down time on the mats due to the divisions being small, and the posted schedule fairly spread out.  It wasn't intolerable, and was actually a nice pace.

The kids divisions showed some great jiu jitsu.   They were only allowed to do arm bars, and chokes where the referee can see the other kids face, like RNC, triangles not pulling on their head, collar chokes, and so on.  Not a lot of kids came out, and I can totally understand kids(and their parents/coaches) not wanting to do the sub only format. I think they should probably not have kids divisions next time. That being said, I refereed Ever vs Liam, and these kids showcased amazing jiu jitsu, great cardio, and great heart.  I was really impressed with both of them.  There were also some younger kids on the match beside us that showed amazing transitions and flow. The future of BJJ in ontario is very bright!

There were some amazing fights in the blue and purple divisions to.  I didn't get to watch a lot of the white, so I can't say for sure.  But I did ref one between two guys who obviously knew each other well. They had a good fun match, probably should have focused a little more and chatted less. But it was cool to see the comradeship and whatnot.  I could have gone without the coach(err friend, who really knows if anyone actually considers Mike a coach) heckling and whatnot, but whatever.

The blue belt absolute had some crazy matches.  Myles triangled Sean Kent quickly in the 2nd round and everyone was in shock.  Myles has a ridiculous guard and I hope, for the sake of all the up and coming blue belts, he gets his purple belt soon.  The podium for the blue absolute was gold/silver closed out by Kevin and Kofi from gringos, with the bronze medals going to Matt from pura and Myles from united.

The purple absolute podium looked like this:
1 Alasdair Barr Pura BJJ
2 Greg Deniken Matador BJJ
3 Adam Blackadder Matador BJJ
3 Lonnie Warner Gracie Humaita

There was even a white belt absolute! Which the OJA doesn't usually do, but did anyway, I think because it was a sma turnout and we had time or it.   Here are the white belt winners:

1 Donnie Mckenzie BTT Canada
2 Dean Wheeler Kumo Jiu Jitsu
3 Mark Riley Bruckmann MMA
3 Nick Routier Gringo BJJ

Here are the complete results.


There were a few hiccups, of course.  This was the first event of it's type in ontario.  There have been other sub only events.  But they were invitationals, or open weight only, or more like shows.  This was the first tourament, open to everyone, with divisions and whatnot.  There were some complications which deciding and sticking with how long the matches would be, but it all worked out in the end.  If the silly boys had just listened to me when I said the original way they were doing a few things was unfair and didn't make sense, it would have saved me some headaches and probably others. But hey, it all worked out in the end, and no adult fights ended in a draw.  (any that DID have a time limit didn't hit them).

I think one of the really important things that kept the double dq from happening and got us home on time was the fact that you could lose by stalling.   We called staling pretty quick, and they stacked up like they normally would in a regular match. So there was no stalling out to rest or keep a dominate position.   I don't think anyone actually got dq'd for stalling, but knowing it was possible kept people active.

My team mates had a pretty good day.  We only had 3 guys out, but they managed to place second in the team rankings!   Yes, it's a small tournament, and gringos, at #1 was way ahead. but still,  there were a bunch of teams with the same or more competitors.


That's about it for this event, it was a short day, so it gets a short post!

Next weekend is the grappling industries summer havoc.  Round Robin, early weigh ins, and smooth running make this an event worth showing up to.  They did raise the prices, but there is no sanctioning/organization fee so it's basically the same as it was before.  They are giving away a bunch of trips to 2 different ibjjf events. Mostly for the guys, but 2 for the girls.  All you ladies need to get out to that event because it's such a good opportunity to get lots of matches, and maybe win a trip to a cool tournament in a new city.  I hate that I can't fight, but refereeing is going to give me more then enough trouble with my arm as it is.  Today wasn't to bad, because there was no points to give out, but when i raised one guys hand with it, he was excited and swung it way up fast, and that hurt like a mofo.  

Two weeks after that is the IBJJF Toronto Open.  This event was a bit small last year, but well run, and a good event.   I'm hoping it grows a bit this year, and we can one day rival the New York, Boston, or Chicago open (of course, the ontario open rivals them, but it's not an ibjjf event, but it's just as good as them).

A couple weeks after that is grapping industries sunshine blvd.  Then the GTA Classic.   I don't have a link for that yet.

Lots of good stuff going on in the GTA for the rest of the summer.

See you... around, mostly on the sidelines.

In case you are not up to date on my shoulder situation:
1. I have an MRI scheduled for Sept 26th
2.  Every medical professional (2 very experienced physio therapists, the best sports doc in the country, and his resident surgeon)  all came to the same conclusion about it. That I have a torn labrum, possible torn rotator cuff, and a highly unstable shoulder.  That all have said it will probably need surgery, but they won't order it without an MRI.   I sure hope I can get a cancelation, or can pull some strings to get that MRI moved up, because at this rate, I don't even want to think about when the surgery will be and how long after that I'll be back.   I generally love our health care system, but it's times like this that I curse it.
3.  It was feeling better 2 weeks ago, then I trained a bit, and it got very bad again. I accidentally slept on it a couple nights and it hurts really bad in the morning when I do that.  I thought maybe the injury had been in my head, or that it wasn't as bad as it seemed, or that i donno, it was't as bad as it seemed first off, but the way it's been the last week makes me think It really is that bad :(
4.  I'm trying very hard not to get horribly depressed about it. It's difficult because I am a total endorphin junkie and being so inactive is really difficult for me.

Tata for now!