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My name is Romeo Barnes. I'm an author and a BJJ black belt with cerebral palsy. This blog is about my life balancing existence in two worlds. My latest book, My World is now available Amazon.com. Glad you're here, enjoy the journey.

GQ Nationals report

I just left the GrapplersQuest US Nationals and incredibly pissed off at myself. I got a bye the 1st round(my dad keeps counting it as a win which technically, I guess it makes him feel good I personally don't see it that way) so that was awesome simply because one win puts me in the medal rounds, sadly, I failed to get that win.

Here's the match(The opponent started on his knees as per my request):

I reach for his right lapel with my left hand. He beats me inside and grips my left lapel with his right hand, I break the grip dragging him to right as a result. (at this point he has one knee up and one down) I hold on to the sleeve and go for the back grab to force the turtle position and work collar chokes(instead of taking the single leg that was screaming at me), he postures and shoots for half-guard and gets it; moments later, as I'm climbing up for my passing position I get caught in a triangle and have to tap.

This makes me 0-1 at purple belt and 0-4(with a default win) overall in competition. I fucking hate losing it sucks like you wouldn't believe.

This loss taught me a few things:
1) Because my hips are slow(i was slow turning the corner) anything that requires turning corners is out.
2) People beat me with their legs. My BJJ MUST become wrestler's BJJ meaning single leg and double leg takedowns are my best friend. I will dive on them like a possessed gorilla going after bananas from this day forward.
3) I need to work on my half-guard positioning and passing.
4) I do much better with a coach cornering than w/o one.(My dad was technically my cornerman but as he doesn't practice BJJ himself he usually doesn't help much).

In retrospect, if I'd taken the single leg off the drag we would've had a completely different match but that's what your corner is for and it's up to speed you run into issues.

I'll definitely talk with my coach about putting a competition team together as we don't officially have one.

pros:
Fighting early
getting a bye
getting the first competition at purple belt level out of the way.
cons:
being the only rep for the team (AGAIN!!!)
losing

I hope I'm taking the Felipe Costa route. It sure feels like it.

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