You may have heard that former UFC weigh-in specialist Anthony “Rumble” Johnson was set to make his debut at “RumbleWeight” last night at Titan Fighting Championship (TFC) 24 in Kansas City, Kansas. Well, he did. The former welterweight Johnson made the 205lb light heavyweight limit and then battered Esteves Jones until he secured a 2nd round stoppage in the TFC main event.
But we were more interested in seeing how submission grappling and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu world champion Braulio Estima would do in his MMA debut, anyway – especially after Renzo Gracie told this writer yesterday when he visited him to tape an episode of the soon-coming podcast, The Conversation, that Estima had dropped over twenty pounds to make welterweight and then put it all back on for the fight. Renzo said that it was the first time Estima had ever made such a weight cut.
Besides, we hadn’t heard much from Estima since his amazing grappling match non event with Nick Diaz .
Estima is the reigning top dog in submission grappling and could conceivably stay that way for a long time. Instead, he decided to test the waters in mixed martial arts.
His first test was Chris Holland, a fighter who went into the contest with eight pro fights to Estima’s none. In the end, Estima’s lifetime of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu prevailed as he put Holland to sleep with an arm triangle choke.
As you will see from the fight video above, Estima clearly is only comfortable with wrestling and submissions at this point in his MMA career. But he prepares with Renzo at his academy as well as with the Blackzilians, in Florida. So with the right attitude and enough years of experience, we might even see him start winning MMA fights with counter right hook KO’s.