Westside Submission Highlights

Highlights of Chris Brennan’s Westside Submission Championship.  No gi submission grappling.  I was a purple belt at the time, but there were no skill divisions in this tournament, only weight divisions.  All styles welcome.  Japanese MMA star Genki Sudo dropped in to an earlier tournament as a grappling warmup to his UFC debut.  You never know who or what you’re going to get. 

I actually lost my first 2 matches, and having won my last tournament, I thought it was uncharacteristic and quite a blow to my ego.  So I said to myself, “Well, it’s all about experience now...” and dropped any expectation of winning.  It was a round robin style, so everyone fought everyone, and it was definitely rough.  By the end of the day, 2 of the original 10 competitors in my weight division dropped out from injuries. 

A loss was awarded no points, a draw was a point a piece to each competitor, a win on points was worth 2, and a submission victory was rewarded by 3 points.  After losing those first 2 matches, I submitted my next 5 opponents, and ended up taking second place.  I just had to let go of my ego to let it happen.  It was a grueling day, physically, and it took some time to recover.  It was after this tournament that I started to re-evaluate the risk reward ratio of competition.  But I still have that silver medal, on my desk.  After all, a lot of energy went into that paperweight.

This video requires Quicktime 7.
You can download it for free by clicking the button to the left.