What We Learned from the ADCC Denver Open

 

The ADCC Denver open just finished up, so let's take a look at what happened. Although it was mostly amateurs there were also some pros that turned up and overall the action was great. This event had the most submissions of any big event I've covered. If you haven't checked this event out, you should.

 Results

Men's Advanced Champions

-60kg Sebastian Oyervidez

-65kg Tristan Sainz

-70kg Deandre Corbe

-76kg Michael Liera

-83kg Oliver Taza

-91kg Matheus Lutes

-100kg Breylor Grout

+100kg John Hansen

Absolute Yeppie Tomasian

Women's Advanced Champions

-60kg Morgan Black

-66kg Peyton Letcher

-70kg Helena Crevar

Absolute Helena Crevar

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How People Won

Unfortunately, because of some confusion I didn't get the stats from the absolute divisions, but all of the other stats from the men's and women's advanced divisions are here. First of all, this tournament had a  61.6% submission rate, which might be the highest I've ever seen at a big tournament. Surprisingly you'll see that many of the submission happen within the first 2 min. People were not playing around and were trying to get their opponents out of there quick. 

It seemed like everyone left their leg lock defense at home for this one. Usually the larger number of matches we see the more it follows the familiar pattern of chokes, leg lock and arm locks coming in 3rd. This time however leg locks were far and away the most common submission. This may be due to the lack of pro competitors. Don't enter the advanced division if you can't defend your legs. There were numerous people that were getting submitted in less than 1 minute. 

These matches in general weren't close as you can see by the lack of refs decisions. Even most of the points matches were exciting. I hope everyone keeps this same attacking mindset throughout the rest of the year. 

Stats

This time I didn't track submission attempts in order to save myself time. However I have subs for all the advanced divisions except the absolutes. The most common submission in Denver was the inside heelhook. This was being hit from the saddle and 50/50. There was even some use of the outside sankaku that Lachlan Giles popularized. The outside heelhook is also making a come back and was the 3rd most common sub seen. This was closely followed by the armbar and was just beat out by the RNC. 

We also saw some fairly rare submissions as well such as the Suloev stretch, the dead orchard and gogoplata and the americana. It is nice to see some variety and unusual submissions. 

Overall

This was a great event for submissions. It was very exciting and there was little to no stalling. There were quite a few skill mismatches, but those made for good finishes. Helena Craver looked very good and I'm sure she will being making a splash on the pro grappling scene soon. Deandre Corbre also looked very good and hopefully this win will get him a spot on WNO vs bigger names. 

It seems these will be coming about every 2 weeks which should be good. I might skip a few if there aren't any big names competing, but I will try to cover most of them in the future, so be sure the check back to see all the latest news and stats. 

Year to Date

Here are the updated stats for year to date subs. The writing is looking a bit small, so I'll have to split it into multiple charts next time. For now please bear with me.