My many faces

Two of my favorite fighters of all-time are featured in this fight from the very first BJJ World Championship back in 1996. Check out Roleta using inverted guard and turtle guard almost in an interchangeable manner through the fight.

I had my first black belt match at the US Grappling tournament on Saturday. There was only one other competitor signed up for the Gi. My cardio just hasn't been good enough for multiple divisions since I came back from my surgery. :-( It was pretty short. I start on all as always. I made lapel grip and before I could push to get in on his legs, he was able to get a deep cross collar grip as I went to up break it he was able to drive me down and score 2 points for the take down and eventually secure a solid side control after about a minute of using grips on my sleeves to prevent me from getting to turtle. Since he kept his collar grip that he used to get the take down I was defending X-chokes from various positions the entire time. He was eventually able to secure mount and finish the X-choke about 4 minutes in. His grips and control were perfect the entire time there was really nothing I could do. I must Big ups to Russ Helm for actually fighting me and not pulling the score fro...

This is one of the greatest Jiu-Jitsu matches of all-time. Demian Maia vs Jacare put on a clinic. This match took place at the now defunct World Cup Jiu-Jitsu tournament back in 2005 as a result few within the BJJ community have seen it, most of those who have are BJJ super nerds like me. Every time I watch this match I learn something. Enjoy and see what you can learn.

Emotions Volume 1: The Beginning of Turmoil & Emotions Volume 2: Better Days are now both available for purchase on all Amazon.com's European sites for any international readers. Emotions Volume 3 has yet to be subtitled but is currently in the works.

Yesterday 2/21/12 marked a marked a year since I've been training post-surgery. I wanted to post just to mark this moment down just so I never forget it. I made a vow to myself not to look for taps and just work position for a year. I wanted to make sure my technique was perfect. Now that has been done so I can start harder training begin my road to my World Championship.

I'm taking a break from writing for a month with 3 books in progress I'm feeling burnt out and on top of that it's tournament time. There's no way I can focus on my black belt debut and write good compelling books. I'll be back in the literary world on April 25th. I will have a new book out by the end of the year.