COMPETITION WRITE UP: NEBRASKA CITY SUBMISSION CHALLENGE M/18+/WHITE BELT/171-185

SPOILERS: I took home bronze, losing my first match and winning my second

First Match (Semi-finals: Loss)

Definitely a "blink and you'll miss it" thing.  I think I genuinely need a "tune up" match before I actually start competing, because this same thing happened to me at the last comp: I come in slow, awkward, and wondering to myself "what the hell am I doing here?", and this time the dude on the other end sensed that and took advantage of it.  He was explosive and game and quickly got my back, at which point all my years of wrestling took over, I got to my base...and got choked the f**k out.  I fought a little by tucking my chin, but I was just not thinking through the fight at the time.  In retrospect, there were a million other things I could have done, but live to fight another day and learn.

Second Match (Bronze Match: Win)

I KNEW that I needed to win A match if I wanted to bring home hardware, since there were 4 competitors today.  I didn't actually get to see the other dude's match, despite looking for him, as I was hoping to learn SOMETHING about his game before we rolled.  But, as soon as I approached him, I looked at him and thought "lunch".  Once again, it's kinda cool that my killer instinct is actually coming out to play these days, because in my 20s I was too much a "nice guy" and really missed out on a lot of possible Ws.

We felt each other out at the start and I quickly realized that I was much stronger than this guy, so I played that to my advantage and broke him down standing as much as I could: fighting off his underhooks, getting better positioning, dragging him where he didn't want to go.  I tried some more aggressive takedowns, and even felt the instinct to go for a double leg at one point, but instead I ended up on my knees with him attempting to get my back.  I managed to prevent that and get him onto his back...and that's where most of the match went.

I am pleased at how I was able to impose my will on him the entire time.  He never got to have a say in where we were, what we were doing, or how we were doing it.  Occasionally, he'd keep a guard longer than I'd like, or roll out of something, but that was about it.  My conditioning was even better than last time, and his was significantly worse than anyone else, so I could feel his strength fading and it just got me to keep pushing even harder.

However, it was also blatantly apparent how undangerous I was.  I kept going for the handful of subs I knew and none of them landed.  I equated it to being like a Terminator robot who never got the combat programming uploaded into their CPU: I was relentless and unstoppable...and ineffective.  

BUT, the advantage of that is, when the timer ran out, overtime decision gets to go to the aggressor of the match, and there was no question that it was me.  In overtime, both competitors get a chance to escape from the other competitor while they try to submit.  I knew the other guy was exhausted, so I chose to be on defense first, knowing I could escape from him.  He DID try to get in a choke, but in 22 seconds, I was out.

From here, I knew that all I needed to do was hold onto the dude and squeeze the sh*t out of him so that he couldn't escape in 22 seconds, and that's exactly what I did.  His conditioning fell apart and he had no strength to deal with me, and eventually time ran out for him and I walked away with the win.

Some of the things I pulled off that I'm happy with: I actually employed some of my old wrestling tricks here, specifically the cross-face cradle.  That was my go to in high school, and it still works to get positioning.  I also was fighting for subs the ENTIRE time, up until the last second...to include what I'm pretty sure was a backwards set up for a triangle choke.  I also was pretty creative in applying pressure from the top and just plain making the other dude uncomfortable.  And again: I'm VERY pleased with how my conditioning held up.  I actually felt better this time compared to last, where I was MORE focused on conditioning training.  I'm thinking taking this week a little lighter in training may have helped.

Oh yeah, and let me just pat myself on the back for being the oldest dude there.  The first guy I competed against I was 17 years older than: final dude I had 9 years on.

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Let's talk the pre-comp stuff.  I woke up at 80.6kg, so I was stupidly underweight for the competition, which meant I had an AWESOME breakfast

4 pastured eggs, one sirloin cap from Costco, and a grassfed piedmontese New York Strip, all swimming in grassfed ghee.  And, as you can see from that second match, this provided me PLENTY of energy for competition.

It was a 45 minute drive to the competition, during which time I took down a 32 ounce combo of green tea, hot water and electrolytes, which put even MORE weight in me.  I weighed in at 183 in full sweats, still giving up 2lbs.