(As if I needed an excuse to use this photo.)
For those of you who were too busy watching Jon Jones outgun Rampage Jackson to retain his light heavyweight title or Ben Rothwell fall to 0-1 at the hands of Mark Hunt this weekend, you may have overlooked the ADCC Submission Wrestling World Championships, which transpired in Nottingham, England of all places.
Andre Galvao easily had the best night of the bunch, taking gold in both the Under 88kg and Absolute tournaments, defeating Rousimar Palhares and Pablo Papovitch, respectively. Speaking of “Paul Harris”, he continued to prove that his mind is a fragile, ticking time bomb in his submission victory over David Avellan in their quarterfinal match. Things began to go off the rails when Palhares dove for his signature heel-hook-of-death on Avellan, and continued to crank it after the two rolled out of bounds and the referee yelled for a restart. I’ll let David’s brother Marcos, via his Facebook, explain the rest after the jump:
It was a weird situation right after… Palharas started to celebrate, thinking the match was over, and came over to hug my brother, but as he hugged my brother, he slapped him across the head really hard. So one arm went out for a hug, the other went for a slap on the head (lol). My brother was naturally pissed by the heel hook and the slap.
Palharas seemed genuinely confused, both about his cranking after the ref said stop and by the rejection of his post fight “hug”. I think he was sincerely genuine, I just think he is crazy, like bi-polar or something.
After the restart, Palhares went on to quickly kneebar Avellan, possibly injuring him. And if you aren’t yet convinced that Palhares is a danger to sound minded people across the globe, the oddities continued in his finals match against Andre Galvao, when he was accused of trying to wrench Galvao’s thumb in order to avoid a hold. Personally, I’ve had about enough of this guy’s apparent ignorance to all things legal and holy. He’s like a T-1000 with the brain of Corky from Life Goes On, sent from some horrific future in which appendages are the last form of human resistance.
In other news, Dean Lister made an improbable run to secure the Under 99kg title, finishing Xande Ribeiro and Jaoa Assis with successive leglocks to claim gold. Lister’s age and lack of recent competition had all but killed his chances before the tournament even began, so big ups to “The Boogeyman” for his win. In the Over 99kg finals, former TUF 8 finalist Vinny Magalhaes survived a last minute armbar attempt by Fabricio Werdum to secure a victory on points, besting his two previous bronze medal efforts in the 2009 ADCC Championships.
In the women’s Under 60 kg tournament, Kyra Gracie secured her third ADCC title with a beautiful omaplota/rear naked choke hybrid finish of Michelle Nicolini. The win adds to Kyra’s incredible list of credentials, which includes four World BJJ Championships, five Pan American, Brazilian, and New York State Championships, and one Asiatic BJJ Championship. Damn, girl.
The bad luck streak continued for former Strikeforce Middleweight and 2009 ADCC Superfight Champion Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, who was routed in a tentative 3-0 loss on points to 2009 ADCC double gold winner Braulio Estima. Full results for the event can be found here.
-Danga