Tournament Part 1- gi

From Rory Miller's blog.... he was talking about being a little guy on the football team, but I can relate to this as a mini martial artist.

"I found out I could take a hit and get up and keep going. Found out that if I deliberately picked the biggest guy and slammed him with everything I had I'd get knocked in the dirt but if I did it again...and again...and again eventually he would flinch. And if I could get him to think I was crazy, that I wouldn't give up and find that flinch moment I could knock him down and keep going. Found out that on defense, even guys too big to stop could be misdirected by an elbow upside the helmet. Found out a lot of things hurt and most of the time the pain meant nothing. That the person who was willing to get back up was the toughest. That there was a limit to size and strength but there was no limit to your willingness to pick yourself up and hit the bastard one more time."


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Had to work all day today, then a BJJ class, then Kung Fu, work again early tomorrow. I got a little time early in the morning at work to write up the first half of the Revolution, while I was waiting for some of my project ingredients to come to room temp. I hope I can get caught up before I get too far behind!


The good news; I didn't have to fight Alecia.

The bad news: I had to fight the girl who BEAT Alecia.



For this edition of the Revolution, I got to the venue in plenty of time to put my contacts in beforehand! I spent somewhere in the neighborhood of two hours sitting in the back hallway waiting for gi weigh-ins. They called the weight class below mine.... and the weight class above mine.... I was completely paranoid about missing my call! There was a girl lying on the floor down the hall from me, and I was trying to estimate her weight in case I should wake her up for one of these calls. I'm starting to get better at estimating weight on smaller-size girls in my own neighborhood. I thought "No, that's not her weight class, she's too big for that...."

I saw some guy in line squirt half the contents of a honey bear straight down his throat! Ugh! Another guy asked the person behind him if he'd had breakfast, and the second guy replied, "A scoop of peanut butter." Ugh! Glenn weighed in on the practice scale and was point-something over. I said, "You'd better go try to pee!"

I was just under my bracket. I could have slipped into the next-lower bracket. My opponent (Rihanna) was point-something overweight. They were going to DQ her. They asked me if I wanted to fight her anyway, so I said sure. The first thing she did (after thanking me) was pull a candy bar out of her bag and gorf it right in front of me. I wanted to say, "Gimme half of that, or I'll have you DQ'ed after all!" I had stopped at the grocery store on the way in and bought a turkey sandwich and some sliced deli ham, but I'd resisted the urge to buy junk food. I knew I was safely underweight for gi, but didn't have a whole lot of extra wiggle room for no-gi, and I knew I didn't have the self-control to save junk food for later!

Thus, this girl had a full ten-pound advantage on me.

We chatted while we were waiting for our matches, and she was really nice. We agreed that neither of us wanted to be female dogs and be grinding each other's faces and garbage like that.... so that was nice to establish.... and helped me relax.

We were the only two women in our bracket, so we were supposed to fight each other three times and take best two out of three. As soon as we grabbed each other to fight for the takedown, I was like, "Oh, great- another wrestler," She was hauling down heavy on my shoulders and lapels, and trying to yank me to the side, and once she started pulling my gi up over my head. We both tried a few foot hooks. I was happy that I attempted some of those. I even considered the fall-on-your-butt-and-plant-feet-in-hipbones-and-toss maneuver that I'd gotten on Alecia last week.... but if I was going to go for that in comp, I wanted her to totally overcommit her weight by pushing into me. I pushed into her- often that elicits a reflexive push back, and that's when you grab for it- but she wasn't taking that bait. Rats. I realized a little too late that she was telegraphing a bit just before the yank-to-the-side, and the thought floated through my mind that I ought to come up with something clever to counter with the next time she did that. Just as I thought that, she did it again and I found myself flying ass over teakettle across the mat.

JB took some vid of this match and the next one from the bleachers.... not great quality, but when I see it, I ought to remember more and have some more to say about those fights. It's a little fuzzy. I seem to recall that Rihanna initiated the takedown both times but didn't get points for it either time because of the way we landed. After the first takedown, she got a vicious KoB that pinned me like a dead bug on a card- it seemed like a lot longer than 3 seconds, but it didn't look on the vid as if she got points for it. In one of the matches- I forget which- I was THISCLOSE to getting a clock choke- I was thinking "AH HA, NOW I HAVE YOU!!!" but she squirted out somehow. I am very pleased to say that I did not spend these two matches in bottom half guard. I got out of bottom half guard twice, using the technique that I had practiced with George on Friday night (Thanks again, George and Cindy!). I even got on top a bit. However, she tapped me out in the end... the first time with an RNC and the second time with a triangle. While I was getting RNC'ed, the photographer crawled up close enough to smooch and took a photo with his bright red flash right in my face. Thanks, buddy. Rub it in, why don'tcha. That pic had better not show up on the May Revolution poster. I was annoyed to get tapped with a triangle, since avoiding that had been one of my goals.... I think I set too many goals this time. I was so busy thinking about staying out of bottom half guard that I forgot to be hypervigilant for the triangle setup.

Since Rihanna had won the first two matches, there was no need for a third. I felt okay enough about my performance against a worthy opponent that I felt okay accepting a second place for being the loser in a two-person field. Rihanna was a nice girl, and a good martial artist. It wasn't too bad to lose to her.

The most significant thing of note about these matches was how quickly I gassed out. I didn't gas out like this in the last Revolution until the middle of my second fight, and I was a lot more scared then. This time, I seemed to gas out almost immediately. In the second match, we weren't fighting grips for twenty seconds before I thought, "OMG, I'm tired... I feel weak as a kitten. How am I going to get through this match?" I'm sure at least some of it was nerves. It's weird, though, that I can go for two hours at practice, and yeah, I'm tired- but not tired like THIS, after mere minutes.

When I went to the back hall for the podium formalities, Rihanna was there with an older woman who looked just like her. Just in time, I bit my tongue on "And this must be your mom!" I would die of embarrassment if I said that and it turned out to be her two-years-older sister or something. So I choked that off and just stuck my hand out and let her introduce herself. "Hi! I'm Rihanna's mom!" "Hi! I'm the girl that she beat!" "Well! Ahhh... thank you?!?" "You bet! Anything to help out!" We all cracked up.

I sat in the bleachers with JB, and we watched Peter, Pat, Glenn, Hostility Boy, Jerome, and several other Gracie Barra guys fight. Jerome was one of the highlights of the tournament for me. He lost the match, but he fought very well- including a beauteous hitch hiker escape that ought to have been in a superhero movie. All of us in the stands were like, "WHOAH!!! Did you see that??!??!" It was a white-knuckler of a fight. Bummer that he didn't win. I got to congratulate/compliment him on it when he came back up in the bleachers. The other four guys won their fights. I don't know how they ended (and the results aren't up yet), but I think Glenn got first in his division.

JB and I agreed that we felt sorry for the girls who would have to fight Cornelia and Alecia. We saw Cornelia and Alecia each do a couple matches and win. Unfortunately, they were on a rear mat, and there was a particularly rotund ref standing between us and that mat, so the view was pretty poor. Soon, though, it was "OMG, are we actually going to see Cornelia and Alecia throw down??!!??" (Recap- Cornelia: the judo black belt who sprained my finger in January, who kicks my butt all over the mat at Gracie Barra. Alecia: the rough MMA girl who smeared me 21 (and an advantage, lest we forget) to zilch in a practice match last week, and kicks my butt all over the mat at Cindy's.) Sure enough, there they were facing off for first place. I know Alecia has mad wrestler's takedown skills, but I kind of expected Cornelia's judo takedowns to send her sprawling fairly immediately. They both fought long and hard for the takedown, though. It was another white-knuckler. JB and I didn't know who we should be rooting for, but it was nice to know that we could be happy regardless of who won! Cornelia tapped Alecia- so Cornelia got 1st and Alecia 2nd in their division.


I woke up REALLY sore this morning- I think just from the tension!

Next installment soon: no-gi.................