A rundown of the biggest headlines and news from the world of competitive grappling.
The Australian leglocking phenomenon Craig Jones has announced that he will be joining the cast of season 29 of The Ultimate Fighter as a grappling coach. He will be joining his fellow Australian and the reigning UFC featherweight world champion, Alexander Volkanovski, to impart his grappling knowledge to the next generation of bantamweight and middleweight MMA fighters.
The opposing team will be captained by Brian Ortega, who has had his title shot delayed due to Volkanovski being hospitalised after testing positive for Covid-19. There’s no official confirmation as to who will offer their services as grappling coach for Team Ortega, but considering that one of the constant fixtures in his corner is Rener Gracie, this could make for two of the best grappling coaches ever seen opposite each other on a TUF season.
PJ Barch puts on a dominating display at the Emerald City Invitational
It’s not often that a grappler manages to make his way through a sixteen-man tournament by submitting every single opponent, but PJ Barch did exactly that at the Emerald City Invitational. One of 10th Planet’s brightest stars, Barch earned ‘Performance of the Week’ from FloGrappling for submitting his way through the entire tournament and even managing to defeat one of the top ten no gi grapplers in his weightclass along the way.
Even more impressively, Barch didn’t rely on just one attack and submitted all four opponents by different methods. The first two matches against Andrew Solano and Werther Marciales were finished by rear-naked choke and armbar respectively and they earned him the chance to take on ADCC veteran John Combs. He secured the tap with a heelhook against Combs before forcing Alan Sanchez to tap to a Kimura in the final.
Kennedy Maciel stages a phenomenal comeback at Fight 2 Win 169
Both FloGrappling and Fight 2 Win themselves almost immediately declared this the greatest comeback in the promotion’s history, and for good reason. For around nine minutes of a ten-minute match, Joshua Cisneros was all over Kennedy Maciel. Cisneros was chaining attacks together relentlessly and under F2W rules, matches are decided by submission attempts if the regulation period ends.
Maciel looked as though he was inches away from being submitted on several occasions and as the minutes drifted by, Cisneros looked certain of victory by the judges at least. Then with thirty seconds to go the unbelievable happened and Maciel found himself scrambling to take his opponent’s back. As the match clock dwindled to just ten seconds left, Maciel sunk in the rear-naked choke and forced the tap to be declared the winner.
Full results for the event can be found here.
Dillon Danis wants to be next in line for boxing match with Jake Paul
Jake Paul was only hours removed from his third professional boxing match, simultaneously his first against someone with any kind of combat sports experience, and he already had someone in line for the next one. Paul knocked out Olympic Wrestler and MMA veteran Ben Askren in the first round of their fight, the main event of a PPV that was filled with unusual fights, bizarre segments, and musical performances.
Marcelo Garcia black belt and Bellator MMA fighter Dillon Danis has wasted no time in calling out Paul for a boxing match after seeing the amount of attention and money this last fight generated. It’s debatable whether Danis is actually technically any better at boxing than Askren showed himself to be, but he’s at least in his athletic prime right now. Paul’s career so far has shown that if enough people are willing to pay for it, the fight will get made.
Quick Hits
- Demian Maia has just received the 5th degree on his BJJ black belt after almost two decades of competing at the highest levels of the sport.
- Mackenzie Dern locked up a beautiful armbar finish at UFC Vegas 23 against Nina Nunes and made her way into the top five of the UFC Strawweight division.
- Olympic boxing champion Claressa Shields’ opponent has been announced for her MMA debut as Brittney Elkin, 9-fight MMA veteran, BJJ brown belt, and F2W title-holder.
- Staff Sgt. John Stefanowicz won the US Olympic trials and will now become the first Marine to represent the United States on that stage in almost 30 years at the Tokyo Olympics.
Technique Corner
How to trap the arm and the One-Handed Choke from the back
Spider Lapel to Reverse De La Worm Guard, to the back or Armbar
De La Riva Guard to Berimbolo