What we learned from WNO 16 Rodriguez vs Pena

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 There was a lot of hype around the 4th match between Gordon Ryan and Filipe Pena, however Gordon pulled out days before the match. Nicky Rod stepped in and the main event was changed. On top of that we saw the debuts of JT Torres and Magid Hage. There was also a title fight on the line between light-heavy weight champion Pedro Marinho and Giancarlo Bodoni. The main event was also changed from a no time limit match to 30 min. This was a good event, but not the greatest WNO of all time. None of the matches were terrible, but I don't think any of them will be nominated for match of the year either. I think overall it was good and all the athletes tried to make things exciting. I also thought the commentary was pretty good as well. Hopefully the continue to do events at this time, so I can watch them live. Anyway, let's get into the matches.




Results

Dominic Mejia def Thien Luu via decision

Stephen Martinez def Calon Sabino via decision

Rene Sousa def Kieran Kichuk via kneebar

Jasmine Rocha def Amanda Bruse via ezekiel choke

Jonnatas Gracie def Oliver Taza via decision

JT Torres def Magid Hage via decision

Pedro Marinho def Giancarlo Bodoni via decision

Felipe Pena def Nick Rodriguez via decision

 



How People Won


This event was a bit light on submissions. The only 2 were from Jasmin Rocha and Rene Sousa. This is the first event of the year, so this will make the stats look weird for a while, but hopefully things will pickup as the year goes on. There were a lot of decisions, but many of them weren't close. There were quite a few dominant performances and although you can't really see it through stats, they were very one sided. 

Stats


There were quite a few submissions attempted, but only 2 were actually finished. Rene Sousa landed a kneebar which was actually quite slick. As Kichuk went for an omoplata, Sousa immediately turned it into a kneebar. It looked like one of those instagram techniques that would never work in real life, but it did.

The other submission was the ezekiel choke from mount by Jasmin Rocha. At first people said it was a smoother, but after I watched it back the second time, I could see her insert her hand inside. Either was it was an impressive submission that isn't often seen. 

With 8 matches on the card and 34 submission attempts we get an average of 4.25 attempts per match. Perhaps I'll keep track of this in the future as a metric for how hard people are going for subs. 



Here we can see the sweeps that were attempted during the event. Half gard sweeps were the most popular, but I think this is mostly due to many of the matches taking place from there. Otherwise there was a good variety of sweeps present during the event. Sweeps had a 20% success rate at this event and in the future I'll try to keep track of that so we can see if that rate is good or bad.


The most common pass was the half guard pass. They usually landed the passer in side control or mount. Many people were specifically trying to pass directly to mount, although JT Torres passed to knee on belly several times. The 3/4 mount passes mostly came from when the bottom person escaped mount. 

The bodylock was also a popular pass, although this was mainly due to Nicky Rod. Stephen Martinez also used it quite a bit in his win as well though. The float pass also made an appearance even though some people said it was dead. 

Passes had a 36.8% success rate and as I said above I'll try to track this in the future. I don't believe anyone has kept stats on this before. During this event it seems passing was more effective than sweeping, but of course this is only 1 data point. 


Surprisingly the de ashi barai(foot sweep) tied with the single leg as the most successful technique. The single leg is always up there, but it is actually very surprising to see a footsweep up there as well. We also had a very nice blast double from Pedro Marinho and other nice takedowns. Make sure you check out the de ashi baris in the JT Torres match and the Pedro Marinho match. 


There was a lot of mount at this WNO. Over the last 2 years it seems like more and more people are using it nogi. It was surprisingly more common than side control and you could tell people were making a conscious decision to pass directly to mount. It was a bit strange that there were too many back takes and even more surprising that there were no finishes from there. The top position was the key to victory at this event, but we will see if that continues throughout 2023 or if there will be a return of effective guard play.



Trends

The biggest trend at this WNO event was pressure passing. People were smashing those that wanted to pull guard and not giving them any room to breathe. The 2 most popular passes were half guard and bodylock passes. Even when the bottom person was able to escape the top fighter seemed to stay glued to them and just start all over again. This tight grinding style looks exhausting to go against. It will be interesting to see if this continues as the year goes on or if is just an isolated event because of people like JT Torres being on the card.  


Overall

As I said before this was a good event, but not a great one. Of course we always want to see more submissions, but we can't expect that every time. I think the addition of submission bonuses is good and hopefully this will motivate some of the more positionally orientated grapplers to open up more. 

The 30 min match itself wasn't that bad, but I don't think they should do matches longer than 15min. Anything over that and it can get boring and its impossible to fill a 30 min match with action. Let's cut the fat and try to get better matches instead of longer matches. 

Overall I think the show was a success and I want to see them increase the number of WNO events. I'd be happy to have them once a month even if it meant not every card was filled with big names. A nice quick card with up and coming grapplers wouldn't be bad, so I hope they continue with more WNOs in the future. 

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