May 19th - Battle on the Plains IV

I competed in my second Jiu-Jitsu tournament yesterday and I'd say it went pretty well.  It was hosted out of our school in Lincoln, NE and was a relatively small tournament.  Naturally I was worried that there wouldn't be anyone my size and skill level to compete against.  But, they ended up making a decent division of 4 for gi and 3 for no-gi.  Since there were fewer gi competitors and I think they had some trouble figuring out the no-gi brackets at first, they decided to run through the gi divisions right off the bat. 

I'm not going to try to do a play by play of all my matches as everything is a blur and I was able to take video of it and am working on converting them to youtube.  So, I'll post them soon and just give highlights.

In Gi I won 3 matches all by points.  My first and third matches were with the same guy, Alex I believe his name was.  He weighed quite a bit more than me and was also a blue belt.  I used my half guard skills a lot and then got reversal and knee on belly points when I could.  I was almost kimura'd by him several times.

My second match was against Will, which I dreaded.  Will beats me all of the time in open mat so why not in a tournament?  I ended up staying on top and passing his guard several times for points.

In no-gi it was Alex and another guy from his school (we'll call him wrestler cause I don't remember his name).  I rolled with wrestler first.  Aside from him getting the takedown and keeping me on the bottom for a good portion of the match, I was able to take his back and sink in a rear naked choke.

My final match was against Alex again.  He had a pretty good slamming takedown on me and pretty much dominated me from there.  I was able to get to half guard and I remember him saying something like "Oh shit."  He beat me by points and passed my guard several times.  I was gassed by the end of it.

Ray said that we'd be working on some half guard stuff today, and that he'd show me some stuff from his half guard game.  That will be a huge help because I really love half guard and feel comfortable there.