pcostilow

He defended very well late. Feldman usually does a good job of getting to his offense late, Kueter shut it all down. Stalling? Maybe. Good defense? Certainly

Yeah overlooked that one counting

Every Hawkeye winner has been a transfer lol

Jordan feels very inconsistent to me

The word underwhelming comes to mind with regard to Saunders, but at least he stopped the bleeding.

That could actually be fire

Did somebody say butter on Pop Tarts? I'm calling the police

Glad somebody is identifying the major issues in the sport.

I haven't seen the match, but he got out from bottom on Hepner, who is very stingy on top. I love Birden's upside going forward, looking forward to his 5 appearances.

I was really hoping after 2011 that I would never have to hear the "the amputee actually has an advantage" argument again.

This. I was really bummed that we lost the old forum, i don't post much, but i read almost daily. I am annoyed with the ads, but i'll 100% deal with it as nobody needed to step up and save this, they deserve a lot of credit, and we should all have a pretty high threshold for dealing with/ignoring ads in 2024.

Does anyone know if he plans on doing MMA or just jiu jitsu?

They held it one the same day, in the same city, in the arena that ADCC was held in 2022. Craig is a master troll.

His conditioning at CJI looked solid. His second match didn't show any of it as it was just guard play, but he took it to Rockhold for 15 minutes, pushing the pace just about the whole time. Better conditioning than I've seen from Downey in some time.

I think a lot of the wrestling pushback came from both Downey's match as well as Kerkvliet's - Kerkvliet's opponent played guard the entire match and Kerkvliet looked lost and engaged, then disengaged every time he was put into jiu jitsu positions, and lost the decision despite being on top the whole time (because he never came close to passing and was in a number of legitimate submission attempts).

100% agree. I'm a purple belt and primarily a guard player, and i think pulling guard is conceding dominant position, and if you don't advance your position from there, i don't know how you can say you would. Failed submissions should provide you with as much credit as almost takedowns - none.

A little, not really. ADCC has exploded in popularity the last 5-10 years, has grown significantly, and has started a whole circuit of satellite tournaments, the head of ADCC has flaunted some wealth (although I believe he is independently wealthy), and through all this the prize money has never changed - $10k to the winners, nothing to anyone else. The fact that it is behind Flo's paywall (and Flo is probably more hated in BJJ than in wrestling), and ADCC has really attached its flag to Gordon Ryan, who most people don't like, have added to this. Craig is, on the other hand, completely unserious and pretty universally loved in the sport for both his skill and his sense of humor.

It was a very exciting match, particularly for this high a level. Jiu jitsu matches tend to be much cagier than this because submissions can come from so many positions, little mistakes can end a match in a way that doesn't exist in wrestling. I would also add, in no way is this meant to be an insult, but if you are unfamiliar with jiu jitsu, there is plenty of positional nuance that you might not appreciate. This was basically two guys throwing caution to the wind the whole match, think of it like Ryan Lang - Darrion Caldwell.

Ruotolo's decision to stand with Nolf was what made that match so exciting. The Ruotolo brothers have been phenomenal from very young ages, I think they were home schooled most of their loves so they could focus on training, and since their late teenage years have been among the best in the world, gi or no-gi. They both will scrap with anyone in any position and have well rounded stand up (decent wrestling and judo). Nolf wasn't shooting in like crazy because of the threat of the guillotine, it changes the takedown game. That match was a vision of the potential product here, Kerkvliet against Andrew is the opposite end of the spectrum.

Fair point, it's just something that i lament on the overall acceptance of, I was speaking more to that than the FRL spots.

Half the zoomers that work for me have full blown gambling problems that masquerade as a Fanduel hobby. I'll jump in and agree that i hate seeing the rapid growth and acceptance of this.

IIRC, it was just Pucillo (coming off a redshirt), and Chris Vondruska. We're there any more?

I'm sure Mineo has a personal opinion, but I bet his incentive in posting is just to drive comments and reactions.

I understand that you're correct in the sense that views are good, but as a larger non-Bassett related statement, I don't think the cultural shift of justifying things solely on that has been a good societal trend.

I think Duke might be the weakest of these three and that's saying something because I think he's incredible. So little to pick from between these three, but Blaze and Lockett have really jumped out to me over the last few months.