I had my first black belt match at the US Grappling tournament on Saturday. There was only one other competitor signed up for the Gi. My cardio just hasn't been good enough for multiple divisions since I came back from my surgery. :-( It was pretty short. I start on all as always. I made lapel grip and before I could push to get in on his legs, he was able to get a deep cross collar grip as I went to up break it he was able to drive me down and score 2 points for the take down and eventually secure a solid side control after about a minute of using grips on my sleeves to prevent me from getting to turtle. Since he kept his collar grip that he used to get the take down I was defending X-chokes from various positions the entire time. He was eventually able to secure mount and finish the X-choke about 4 minutes in. His grips and control were perfect the entire time there was really nothing I could do. I must Big ups to Russ Helm for actually fighting me and not pulling the score fro
