What we learned from Polaris 20 Team USA vs Brazil

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 I believe this is the 3rd team event and the 2nd no-gi team event Polaris has done. This time its a bit more interesting because many of the competitors are people we will be seeing in ADCC soon. This will somewhat act as a preview of that and let us know what these competitors games are like. One of the big differences however is the rules and in this format they should be able to cut loose a little more and not have to worry about points. The team format is usually exciting and it also gives up and coming athletes a chance to get their name out there. On top of this we got a super fight between Damien Maia and Benson Henderson. 


Results


Team Brazil def Team USA (2-1)

Damien Maia def Benson Henderson decision


All of the matches were fairly good and there was a good back and forth between the 2 teams as well as in the superfight. 

The superfight featured some nice old school BJJ with Maia using his closed guard and Henderson looking to pass. Maia was constantly trying to go to the back, but eventually caught it in the scramble. From there he spent most of the match going for the RNC and almost got a very close thunderlock. He almost neck cranked Henderson 3 times, but as a former UFC champ he showed his toughness and worked his way out. 

The team matches were mostly draws, but for the most part were exciting. There were only 3 submission this whole event which was a little disappointing. I was going to do some detailed stats on it like I always do, but it seemed a bit pointless for only 3 subs. Mason Folwer got the first sub over Kywan Gracie. This was a very exciting match and Kywan caught me off guard by suddenly jumping for a flying armbar that nearly caught Mason Fowler. After a little bit of a struggle Mason extracted his arm and then passed guard. Mason went for a north-south choke and Kywan tried to counter with an ezekiel choke from the bottom. Mason defends again and then goes for the armbar which gets him the tap. It was an exciting exchange that gave me more respect for Gracie even though he lost. 

The other 2 submissions came from Mica Galvao. Mica was the ringer for team Brazil and he did do very well. Unfortunately for team USA he was often paired against Keith Krakorian. Keith is very good and just won the ADCC trials, but he is smaller than Mica. For these competitions you don't know who your opponent is before you fight, so this adds an element of surprised and strategy to the matches. Mica and Keith ended up fighting during the first round and Keith looked pretty good until about the last minute. Keith got his guard passed and mounted. Mica went for the armbar and had it fully extended, but time ran out right before the tap. Keith was saved by the bell. Later due to chance they were matched up again and a similar situation happened. This time Mica didn't miss and subbed him right before time ran out with that same armbar from mount. The real bad luck came when they were randomly matched up the final time. At this point it seems like Mica figured out Keith's game and was able to pass his guard faster and quickly mounted him. This time he went for a triangle from mount and got it putting team Brazil in the lead and eventually giving them the win. 


Trends



There was a surprising amount of wrestling happening. I'm guessing many of the people were preparing for ADCC and also this format is a bit more playful, so why not try to wrestle. The hand fighting wasn't excessive which I appreciated and people were constantly working for positions on the ground.

Leglocks were not working during these matches and it seems like people are getting wise to the common setups. The style of entries the Danaher death squad were doing in EBI years ago aren't working like they once were. It seems newer slicker entries are needed once you get to this level.

Another thing that wasn't looking too good was the guard. So far it looks like 2022 is the year of the passers and this even was no exception. Many people were playing RDLR, but nobody would really get anything going. People were having a hard time sweeping, submitting, etc from guard and they were mostly getting stalled out or passed. All of the subs came from pinning positions(mount and side control) and it seemed difficult for the bottom players to even get their offense started. From the top people were attacking leglocks, rolling guillotines and rolling kimuras. This is partly due to the rules not penalizing people with points, but I've noticed this happening more and more even in points tournaments like ADCC. The bottom position may not be safe in 2022, be careful out there.
  

Team Format

I think the team format is a lot of fun and makes grappling matches more interesting generally. As of right now there seems to be 2 styles, the Polaris style that is used here and the Quintet style. I like this format and the inclusion of heelhooks is nice as well. Quintet, as the name suggests only has 5 people on each team, but polaris format can have many more. Instead of eliminating members they instead have points and a time limit. I actually like the time format, but 2 periods is a bit too long IMO. I think one 60 minute round is enough and I'd prefer more teams instead of longer matches with the same teams. 

I like the idea of time outs and how that can be used strategically, but it seems the teams aren't using them much. Someone on reddit suggested allowing people to extend the matches. I think this would be a good addition and would add to the strategy. Give each team 3 timeouts that could be used to rest a member for 2 minutes, switch players between matches or extend a match in progress by 2 minutes. This would give people more time to work, stop people stalling for the bell when they are in bad positions and just add to the overall strategy. Hopefully this would help increase the submissions as well. I think this format is very good it just needs a few tweaks. Also they might want to get away from the country vs country thing and perhaps do gym vs gym or just have people make their own teams. 

Overall

This was a fun event and luckily nobody was stalling. Of course you always want to see more positions, but overall I have happy with the amount of grappling. I think the athletes are starting to get the message and they're going for it in these pro events. I wasn't sure how it would go when I first heard Polaris was going to start doing team events, but I think they've all been very good and I hope they continue them. 


Year to Date Stats

This is just a small update and I only added 3 subs, but if you didn't catch last weeks article, check this out. 







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