The - 88kg division was a lot of fun, but also very surprising. I doubt anyone picked Giancarlo Bodoni to win, but he put everything together when it counted and took him the gold. The competitors in this division were a bit more pressure oriented than the lighter weights, but they showed they could explode when needed. There were also quite a few upsets in this division involving Giancarlo, as mentioned above, but also Eoghan O'Flannagan. This division really showed the changing of the guard I was expecting, but even I didn't think it would be so dramatic.
If you haven't seen the other breakdowns check them out below.
-66kg
-77kg
-99kg
+99kg
Women's divisions
There were more points and decision victories than submissions and this always seems to be the case as we move up in weight. I was surprised by the number of leg submissions, but 2 were actually counter attacks. The other was a toehold on an already injured leg. 3 of the 6 submissions came from Giancarlo Bodoni, who had a nearly perfect submission rate. Out of all the wins point victories were the most common, which makes sense as many people in this division have good takedown skills.
Submissions
There were a variety of submissions finished, but there were quite a few misses as well. The guillotine was the most attempted and I imagine this was because of the amount of takedowns in this division. Some of the matches had very little mat work and guillotine was the only chance for a sub in a few matches. 2 of the submissions came from the top position and 1 from the bottom. The rest came from neutral positions.
Sweeps
The most common sweep in this division was the single leg takedown. Sometimes this came from wrestling up and other times it came from another sweep that finished with the single leg. It seems a bit more common in this division compared to some of lighter ones, but I imagine that is due to the increased wrestling level of the - 88kg athletes. However it looks like none of the other sweeps seemed to have any success. Sometimes they did help those on the bottom and allowed them to stand up, but sweeps were not a particularly effective way of scoring at - 88kg.
Guard Passes
There were a number of different types of passes attempted in this division. The most successful was half guard passes, however it also had the most attempts. This was followed by the bodylock and the kneeslice pass. The passing in this division was grinding and pressure based. Most of the people in this division didn't really want to play guard and I imagine pressure was needed just to stop them from standing up. Overall in this division passing and sweeping were not particularly effective and the general BJJ sweep/pass paradigm wasn't a winning strategy.
Takedowns
Takedowns seemed to be the main determiner of these matches. The single leg takedown was attempted the most, however the double leg was higher percentage. It is a bit rare when the double leg has more success than the single, but it wasn't due to a lack of trying for singles. Overall I think this division had the best stand up. On top of singles and doubles we also go a number of interesting less common takedowns. Super ducks, kosotogaris, ude gaeshi, and sasae tsurikomi ashi were all hit.
Positions
There was a good amount of Positional work in this division, but it didn't result in many finishes however. Many of the submissions came from transitions, however the positions certainly helped people win in points. I was a bit surprised about how little work there was from mount however it seemed like the back was easier for people to control, so people just skipped it. I was also surprised by the number of saddle entries, but I beleive that is mostly due to O'Flannagan. The defense from this
position seems to have improved and the saddle is no longer the instant death position it once was.
Overall
This was fun division to watch, especially if you like wrestling. There were a lot of good matches on the feet and we saw a wide variety of different takedowns. This was a division where you could clearly see a changing of the guard. I think there are quite a few good matches to make after this ADCC involving this division. I hope we see more matches with Eoghan O'Flannagan, Giancarlo Bodoni, Izaak Mitchell, etc. Knowing these people can not only hang, but beat the best in the world, gives us a lot of new interesting match ups.
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