What We Learned from Polaris 22

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Polaris 22 just wrapped up and it was a great event. There were some big names and they came through with action packed matches. I was a bit disappointed when I heard Izaak Mitchelle and Nick Ronan dropped out, but their replacements did a good job. I'm also covering the super fight between Carlos Condit and Ash Williams, but none of the prelim matches are included in the stats. With that said let's get into it. 




Results


Ash Williams def. Carlos Condit via inside heel hook

Hunter Colvin def. Owen Livesey via RNC

Roberto Jimenez def. Shane Fishman via points

Jed Hue def. Alan Sanchez via points

Oliver Taza def. Mateusz Szczecinski via decision

Jed Hue def. Oliver Taza via points

Roberto Jimenez def. Hunter Colvin via triangle 

Roberto Jimenez def. Jed Hue via arm triangle

 

Roberto Jimenez is the Polaris middle weight GP Champion


Stats


This was a good event for submissions. Half of the matches ended in submission with 3 coming from neck attacks and 1 leg attack. The points for this event was a bit weird as I beleive every position or action counted as 1 point. This seemed a bit strange to me, but I don't think this actually effected the outcome of any of the matches. 

I think they also had a rule where those who stalled on the feet would be restarted on their knee, but this never occurred during any of the matches. Luckily there wasn't anything I could really call stalling and the athletes kept the action at a fairly high pace. 


There were 4 submissions hit during the event. 3 of them came from a neutral position(standing, the back, double guard, etc) and 1(the triangle) came from the top. The guillotine was attempted many times, but was never close to being finished. Many of the attempts were from Hunter Colvin, who was using them as a counter to Roberto Jimenez's shots.

It should also be noted that 3 of the 4(the heelhook from Ash Williams), came from Roberto Jimenez. He was a submission machine during this tournament and showed why he gets invited to so many pro events. 

The kimura was used quite a bit as well, but it was mostly being used as a means to pass the guard to get to the back. 


The smash pass and north-south passes had the most success and I believe most of them were from Roberto Jimenez. The body lock was also fairly successful and as you can see here pressure passes seem to have been the key to success when it comes to dealing with guards in this event. 

I should mention the te-guruma was a weird situation from Owen Livesey. Owen was passing and Hunter tried putting him in a guillotine, so Owen did what looked like a bodyslam and put him in side control. I guess that is one way to pass the guard. The duck under pass is the common pass you use when you go hard to the left and when the opponent swings their leg over you duck under it and pop your head out on the right side. I wasn't sure what to call it. 


The double leg ruled the day here. Surprisingly there were no single legs and the only other takedown was a deashi barai which was beautiful. The ogoshi showed the dangers of using big throws in grappling. Owen Livesey was being pressured by Hunter Colvin and decided to go for it, but he wasn't in a good position to hit it, so he fell down. Hunter jumped on his back and got the RNC. If you hit a big throw like that it looks awesome, but when it fails, it fails hard. That said if you're goin to lose at least try to do something interesting and I don't know about everyone else, but when I watch a Livesey match I'm there for the throws. 


Wrestling up was the name of the game in this division. Single legs, double legs and bodylocks all scored. Of course there were a few half guard sweeps, but surprisingly the matrix has proven to work fairly well as a sweep. It usually causes a scramble, but the sweeper can usually turn it into something. 

There was a very high success rate for sweeps here, but in general the top people weren't letting sweeps even get started. This could have been due to skill differences or perhaps the top players were putting people in positions that made it hard to sweep. 


There were quite a few positions in this matches which I think made them more interesting. Surprisingly a lot of it looked like traditional BJJ where you pass, then move from side control to mount and finally the back. This classic strategy paid dividends here. The back had the most finishes, with 50/50 and the mount coming 2nd. Side control was achieved fairly often, but there weren't many attacks launched from there. People seemed more focused on improving position than submission hunting. 


Trends

At ADCC wrestling up was a bit rare, but in the few events since then we've seen it quite a bit. Polaris 22 was no exception, with it being the most common style of sweep. Sometimes it came off of another type of sweep that failed, but people like Roberto were just doing it whenever someone got too close with their leg.

In fact these last few events showed what I expected to happen at ADCC. There was an increased use of the mount and side control and overall working from top seemed like a winning strategy. Due to this trend I believe wrestling has increased in importance for no-gi grappling.

Another thing I've noticed the arm saddle(choi bar position) is becoming more and more popular. Many are using it as a primary attack and then following up with leg locks. It seems the choi bar is starting to become a basic attack from the guard and people are starting to work other attacks from the arm saddle position as well.


Overall

This was a really fun event and I enjoyed the match ups. I think Polaris has found a good group of athletes that can create interesting fights so I hope they give these guys more fights in the future. I think this format is good overall and I liked the GP concept. Right now I believe they are using championship belts, but IMO there aren't enough events and contenders to create a division. I think doing once a year GPs for various weight classes is a better idea.  
  
Roberto looked amazing and I was happy to see him escaping leg locks and even trying a few of his own. This has been his biggest weakness and he even succumbed to a heelhook at ADCC a few months ago. I'm happy to see he seems to have made progress in this area. Hunter Colvin also showed a lot of improvement. He can hang with top contenders and I hope to see him on future shows.  

Year to Date Subs

Here are the subs from this year, but they don't include subs from ADCC. I haven't added those stats in yet, but I'll try to get those in before the year is over and analyze the stats.


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