Tournament part 2: no-gi

Text from Cindy: "Congratulations on the win, champ!!!!!"

E-mail from Lamont: "Kitsune, I am very proud of you. Not just your placing but your attitude and performance. You did great!!!!"

E-mail from JB: "I heard you won!!! Good job!!!! =D =D =D I'm so proud of you! It was so awesome watching you compete today!!!! Hugs and chocolate cake!!!!!!!!! ;)"

Text from SK: "I'm alive. Surgery went well. :-) "


I had asked him to text me Monday night or Tues morning just to let me know he was still alive after the general anesthesia. He gave me a whole bunch of crap for being a Mother Hen.

So, where'd I leave off... no-gi. Oh, one more gi thing: my GB teammate Blake got the "Vicious Submission" prize for gi.. armbar in seventeen seconds.

Once again, a two-person field in my bracket. We would fight three times, best two out of three wins. The other girl was a buddy of Peter's. I had been sitting right behind her in the bleachers for half the morning, surreptitiously checking out her biceps. I was thinking that my biceps were bigger, and maybe I was stronger than she. She didn't look as scary as those badass MMA girls from the November Revolution- with their swaggers, glowers, cornrows and gang tats. She looked like a normal girl.

We were the first complete no-gi bracket weighed in and matside, so they went ahead and started us. There were still a few white belt brackets finishing up. We were the first adult no-gi match of the day.

It's all a little fuzzy... but IIRC, yet again my opponent initiated the takedown but got no points because of the way we landed. You know, I don't really mind letting them initiate the takedown if they're not getting any points and I am always going to begin the floorwork in an advantageous position. I really do recover well from takedowns. As soon as I know I'm going down, I'm already beginning to execute the landing and ensuing moves- using the momentum from the takedown.

After that, I spent almost the entire rest of the roll on top. Yup. Wow. I think that deserves an encore: "I spent almost the entire rest of the roll on top."

Also notable- I don't recall finding myself lying in bottom half-guard once during this match.

She got me halfway rolled over a couple of times, but failed to press the matter by getting some weight on top of me quickly enough, so I was able to put her right back down. After a bit, I felt that I was in control and had enough leisure to consider applying a keylock. It was a nice one, and I kept yanking, but she did not tap. Rats- another rubber-shouldered gal.

As we were struggling with the keylock, I abruptly realized that I was much stronger than this woman, and she was going wherever I muscled her. The devil on my left shoulder crowed, "YAY-esss!!" while the angel on my right shoulder groaned, "You brute! You're doing to her exactly what you hate having everybody else do to you! Not only a bully, but a HYPOCRITICAL bully! And this is not good jiu jitsu."

A while later- the devil having muscled the angel into an RNC and choked her out cold- I attempted a kimura on my opponent. I had her arm twisted so far behind her back- and I was thinking, "Jesus H Christ, isn't she ever going to tap??!?" I hadn't had anyone cornering me when we began, but at this point I became dimly aware of Lamont's voice saying very calmly- like he was asking me to please pass the scones- "Kitsune. Switch your hands." Duh! I did that, muscled the poor gal further up onto her shoulder so that I could switch hips and throw a shin over her head to pull the kimura further, and then there was a red beanbag flying past my nose.

Dazedly, I stood there while a ref lifted MY arm instead of my opponent's arm for the very first time.

Walked off the mat, and Peter was standing there waiting. I slapped his hand, then realized that he wasn't waiting there to congratulate me, he was waiting there to console his friend whom I'd just beaten. Oops. A hypocritical INSENSITIVE bully, that's me.

Then Lamont was hugging me, and Professor Carlos was hugging me, and I think some other people were hugging me too, but it's all kind of a blur. Lamont said, "Did you see the points?" No. He said it was something like seventeen to zero. I started shaking and quavered, "Are you shitting me?" I hadn't just beaten her, I'd Alecia'ed her.

I heard "Keetsune.... Keetsune." and saw Rodrigo across the mat smiling and giving me thumbs-up.

Lamont said, "They want you to go again." I said in dismay, "Right now?" There were still no other no-gi brackets matside and ready. "The ref says three minutes." {sputters} "How long do you want?" {more sputters} "Tell me how long you want, and I'll tell him." Thank Gods he showed up and I didn't have to handle these negotiations myself. My brain still wasn't functioning quite right. I swallowed and tried to pull myself together. "I'll go- she's tired too."

Then Peter came over and said, "She wants some more time. In fact, she doesn't know if she wants to fight again." I stared at him blankly. I think he had to repeat it once or twice before I said, "At all??"

The ref was next to loom up in my grill. "She might not want to fight again. You're garanteed at least two matches at this tournament. Is it okay if she doesn't want to fight again? I don't like to see anybody cry."

Lamont again: "She wants to forfeit the remaining two matches. She doesn't want to fight you again."

"Keetsune....Keetsune." Rodrigo is calling at me across the mat again, grinning like a Halloween jack-o-lantern. I have never seen Rodrigo grin this much. At *ME*.

That would probably have felt really good if I hadn't been hyperaware of Peter comforting my obviously very upset opponent/victim at the other end of the bleachers. As it was, I felt kinda crappy. She did eventually come over to me and was very gracious, and I hope I was gracious back. She said that it was her first Revolution, and that it was not how she'd expected. I told her that her technique was good, that I'd just totally muscled her.

I would have felt better if I'd won by nice clean jiu jitsu technique instead of muscling. I was quite honestly perplexed and flabbergasted just to find myself in that position at all. The few times during my entire BJJ career in which I've rolled with someone smaller and weaker than myself- of which I can count on one hand, and have fingers left over- the person was also junior enough that I was just sort of walking them through stuff, draping myself gently over them and letting them escape, etc. I have never muscled anyone until Saturday. I didn't even know what that felt like. It was exceedingly odd. Some kind of bizarre trip that my brain still can't process.

I watched Alecia beat up some girl in her no-gi division, then Rihanna vs Alecia. I had conflicting loyalties. Luckily they were not standing near each other, and there were enough people milling about that I hope neither of them saw me orbiting between them, wishing them both good luck. Wow, another heck of a fight. Rihanna finally tapped Alecia- I think with a choke of some kind. They had to fight each other a second time a little later, and Rihanna beat Alecia again- this time on points. So Rihanna got first in both gi and no-gi. I felt better about having gotten my butt kicked by her after seeing her kick ALECIA'S Butt. Twice. That is one Bad Girl.

At some point in there.... I don't even remember if it was before or after my fight... Relax_On_the_Mat came over and introduced herself, and we chatted a bit. I know I stared blankly at her for a moment. When we'd described ourselves by PM on the forum, she'd said she was "one of the bigger white belt chicks" in a navy blue Koral gi, so I had been scanning the mats all during the gi matches while I was in the bleachers, looking for the "big chicks". I never saw any big chicks. Once she was standing in front of me, I had to work through some cognitive dissonance before realizing that I'd been looking for a horizontally "big chick" while Relax_On_the_Mat is a VERTICALLY "big chick". LoL.

I picked up the traditional post-tournament giant bag of M&M's on the way home from the comp. I was too tired for the traditional post-tournament pizza, and I knew I had to get up early in the morning for work.


The results and photos are still not up online. Cindy's got some pics of the kids up on her school website, though. Her Flicker account won't let me save any of them to post on my blog.... annoying. There's a real cute one showing one of her little boys choking a kid from behind and looking completely gleeful while peeking over the top of his victim's head.