What We Learned From AIGA Champion's League August 2023

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Recently there has been a big push with the AIGA championship. This wasn't theie first event, but this might be the first that most people have seen. For those that aren't familiar the AIGA championship is a team event where you have teams with multiple people who compete against each other. At the end the team with the most wins is declared the victor. The teams fight in a round robin tournament and which ever team had the most wins after 2 days wins. This is a bit confusing, but you can see the results down below. 

AIGA is based in Kazakhstan I believe and they feature many grapplers from that region. There were also some grapplers that were perhaps more familiar to you mostly thanks to Mo Jassim and his Modolfo team.



The event was good overall, but it was a bit uneven. I think with a few changes this could be one of the best events in grappling. It is definitely worth a watch and luckily Flograppling put most of it on youtube. Anyway, let's get into it. 

Results

Day 1

Team Nurmagdomedov def Universal Fighters

Team Modolfo def Al Leon

Team Modolfo def Team Nurmagdomedov

Day 2

Universal Fighters def Al Leon

Team Nurmagdomedov def Al Leon

Universal Fighters def Team Modolfo



1st Team Modolfo

2nd Universal Fighters

3rd Team Nurmagdomedov

4th Al Leon


For individual matches please check this link. 


How People Won




At the beginning of the show things weren't looking good. Team Nurmagdomedov vs Universal Fighters was a pretty nasty showing with only one submission in 7 matches. However after this things started to get better. As the tournament went on we could see more and more submissions and in the end there were more submissions than points/decision wins. On this chart I counted everything as points that wasn't a finish. This is because the round system they used made it difficult to keep track of points and there was no indicator on screen of how the match was won. The Dec/DQ/OT section were 3 matches where someone lost due to forfeit(one was a mistake when someone yelled when they shouldn't have). 

Overall we had a 57.2% finish rate for this event. The number one finisher was leg locks. There were some atheles who had very good leg submission defense, but there were quite a few others who were lacking in that dept. Neck submissions came in second and in last place we saw arm submissions. Arm submissions have generally been coming in last in the past few years and this event was no different. Overall I'm happy with the amount of finishes and overall action at this event. 



Stats

 


The inside heelhook came out on top here. The RNC got edged out here and came in second. The choi bar and outside heelhook tied for 3rd. There were a number of of subs too and I was happy to see some variety in submissions. We almost got to see Fabricio Andre hit a flying triangle, but he couldn't quite lock it up before it was restarted in bounds. The Aoki lock by Jozef Chen was also a highlight for me. 





The back seemed to be the highest percentage place to finish. The trend of being unable to finish from mount seems to be containing, but more people are using it. Side control had a couple of finishes, but people were mostly using side control to transfer to other positions. As far as leg lock positions are concerned, the 50/50 and saddle had the same number of finishes and entries. In the last couple of years the 50/50 became more popular than the saddle, but with the recent popularity of the false reap, the saddle is getting a bit more love.





The single leg was the most completed takedown, but also had lots of failures. The double leg actually had the most failures and many times it wasn't set up properly. Many people seemed to want to spam the double leg from far away, but this might be due to some particular quirks in the AIGA rule set. There were some nice foot sweeps as well. 

 


The sub sweep came out on top here. By sub sweep I'm referring to someone going for a submission and when it doesn't work they come on top for a sweep. This was a successful strategy at this event that scored 5 times. Halfguard sweeps were also quite popular, which were followed by hooks sweeps and single legs.



The north-south pass or passing from inverted guard scored the most. This was mainly due to Izaak Mitchell who used this pass repeatedly against Jozef Chen. This was followed by the torreando pass with 6 completions. This is a pass that usually isn't super effective in Nogi, but these grapplers fought a way to make it work. After this we had the old reliable knee slices and smash passes. There were quite a few other passes as well and we got to see some passes that aren't commonly seen. 

The Good and The Bad


Some people only want to see top talent fight top talent, but I like this format because you can sometimes see mismatches. This is where you get your highlight reels from. 

One thing I didn't like was the round system they used. I felt it made the matches too long and stopped interesting action. I'd much rather have one 10min round rather than three 5min rounds. 

The rules overall were good. I like how they used ADCC as a base, but made improvements. The takedown to turtle scoring improved on the ADCC rules and got rid of some of the frustration I usually have with that rule set. Also the stalling clock is a great addition that every pro grappling even needs to use. They only complaint I had was they didn't use it enough. Get that clock running. 

The show itself was a bit long and I would have prefers less matches per team battle. Perhaps having 4-5 weight classes fight per team battle would add an element of surprise and randomness as well as making the event a bit shorter. When the matches are good it's fine, but when they aren't you don't want to sit through 7 of them. 



Overall

This was a good event overall and I think they are going to the right direction, but there are a few things I think they could adjust to make things even better. It started slow, but picked up over the course of the event. The last match was a nail biter and by the end I was really invested in the matches. I liked what they did with the rules for the most part and I hope they keep experimenting with modified ADCC rules. I'm looking forward to the finale which is in December I believe. It is always nice to have more high level shows and I like that it is putting eyes of international athletes.



 

Year to Date


Here are the updated year to date stats. We've had a lot of changes this month.



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