-77kg was the most exciting division this year just as I predicted. Almost every match was like a superfight and they lived up to the hype for the most part. The eventual winner was Kade Ruotolo who was a dark horse, but conquered the division with a perfect 4 wins with 4 subs.
If you haven't seen the other breakdowns check them out below.
There was plenty of action with 56.3% of the matches ending by submission. As you can see above this is one of the few times when the finishes are inverted compared to what we normally see. Arm attacks were the most common subs in this division followed by the legs and the neck. A lot of this was due to Kade Ruotolo who finished 2 heelhooks and 2 armbars.
Submissions
There were a lot of submission attempts here and it wasn't limited to only common submissions. We got choi bars , Aoki locks and even a side triangle(yoko sankaku jime). The choi bar in particular was interesting and it seems this sub is becoming more and more popular. It works from a variety of places and it seems to catch people off guard unlike the traditional armbar. The inside heelhook made a appearance here at - 77kg and they were both due to Kade Ruotolo who isn't known as a leg locker. Both were caught without the traditional leg entanglements and in transition. Of course position over submission, except when there is a chance to do something cool. The Aoki lock was also interesting as Matheus caught it on William Tackett. Tackett is known for his leg lock defense, but Matheus threw the kitchen sink at him and eventually caught him with the Aoki lock. Just like we saw at - 66kg, I believe that a diverse leg lock game can catch even those with good defensive skills.
Sweeps
There weren't many sweeps in this division. This division had a lot of wrestling and there wasn't a ton of guard work. I thought wrestling up would be more common however it didn't seem to score much. I believe the reason for this is there were too many good wrestlers and even when people tried they were either stuffed or couldn't finish the takedown. To be fair the other types of sweeps didn't fair much better. Overall sweeps weren't really an effective strategy here.
Guard Passes
Passing was a bit more effective than sweeps and 6 passes were completed. The most common pass was the bodylock pass. Before the event I thought that this was going to show up quite a bit and it showed its effectiveness in this division. I'm guessing we will see it increase even more over the next year.
Takedowns
The most successful takedown was the single leg however only about 18% of the attempts were successful. The double leg had a much higher success rate, but it wasn't attempted as many times. The uchimata was also quite successful although throughout this tournament it was mostly used as a counter attack from the single leg. There was also a good amount of footsweep attempts and a couple of successes. In this division there was a good amount of variety and not only did it make things more exciting, but it also kept opponents on their toes.
One of the surprising things about this division was that although there were quite a few dominant positions achieved, most of the submissions didn't come from them. Most of the subs came from transitions and not places people generally try to submit from. I don't know if we need to abandon positional play and turn into catch wrestling, but I think this shows that there is room for a different approach. Many times people leave themselves open in transitions and many of the athletes in this division have been able to capitalize on that.
Overall
This might have been the greatest ADCC division of all time. The names alone had me excited for this and I can say they lived up to the hype. This might also be one of the youngest divisions with the 2 finalist both under 20 years old. These matches were action packed and also had a lot of variety. There was wrestling, submissions, guard work, scrambles and more. If you've never seen ADCC before I'd recommend starting with this division.
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