What We Learned from Polaris 25 Absolute GP

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Polaris is back with a star filled card. Earlier in the year the had the women's absolute GP, but now they are back with the men. We have 2 ADCC champions, and multiple other veterans. I think the amount of matches was just about right and I never felt the matches were taking too long. Recently grappling events have been better when it comes to running the show and keeping things on time. Polaris has really gone big this year with its GPs and I like this new direction they're moving in. Let's take a look at the results. 


Results



Fabricio Andrey def Owen Livesey via points

Izaak Michell def. Roberto Jimmez via points

Giancarlo Bodoni def. Marcin Maciulewicz via RNC

Kaynan Duarte def. Jason Rau via arm triangle

Fabricio Andrey def. Giancarlo Bodoni via points

Kaynan Duarte def. Izaak Michell via points


GP Final

Kaynan Duarte def. Fabricio Andrey via RNC


Super Fight

Aljermain Sterlin def. Mike Grundy via decision




Points made up half of the wins and neck attacks filled in the rest. The only decision on the card was the super fight. I felt the fights were action packed, but it seemed like many of the athletes couldn't get to the submission. I think this was mostly due to the athletes they invited. There weren't really any leglockers, except Jason Rau, so most of the matches consisted of people working to pass the guard and submit. When worked, it worked well. In other cases people just weren't able to get into positions to submit their opponents.

Stats


We don't have too many submissions here. We got 2 RNCs and 1 arm triangle. 3 submissions out of 9 attempts isn't bad, but the actual number of attempts were a bit low for this event. I think this is mostly due to the time the spent on their feet. Many matches were mostly of all standup affairs with little time on the ground. The submissions we did get were beautiful however. 





We only saw 3 sweeps as well. There were a few wrestle ups attempted, but only 1 was successful. Many people, mainly Kaynan, were putting pressure on their opponents and making sure to keep their feet off the ground. This strategy negated most of the wrestle ups. The John Wayne sweep Kaynan hit on Izaak Michell was nice and unexpected.




We are back with another 3 successes. 1 half guard pass and a bodylock pass, although the bodylock could be classified as a half guard pass. Passing from close distances with pressure seemed to be the winning combination here. None of the loose passes had success at this event. 



Many of the matches spent most of their time on their feet, so takedowns were the most commonly seen techniques. The mat return came in a number one followed by the single leg. Although the single leg had the 2nd most successes it also had the most failures. On the feet people were staying fairly busy and although there weren't a ton of takedowns there were a lot of attempts. Jiujitsu really needs to come up with a solution for people going out of bounds. Many of the most exciting sequences were stopped because of resets. Despite that we got a lot of good takedowns and scrambles.



 


The back was the best place to finish as usual. This was followed by the mount, which I always like to see. Recently we have seen more people using the mount in nogi, but there haven't been many finishes. I'm happy we got one here. There were also 2 instances of side control and 1 time people entered 50/50. As I said above, there wasn't a ton of time of the ground in many of these matches, so there weren't many positions. 



Overall


This was a good event. Action wise there wasn't much stalling and we got a few submissions. I would have liked to have seen more, but there were lots of fun sequences and scrambles. The star of the show was definitely Fabricio Andrey who made it to the finals despite being the smallest person there by a large margin. The way he was able to compete on the feet with those that are much larger than him was inspiring. This will definitely raise his stock. Kaynan Duarte also got a much needed win and showed that he isn't on the decline. He looked sharp in all areas and finished 2 out of his 3 opponents. I also appreciated that there weren't too many matches. I think the timing of the event was just about right((except for it being in the middle of the night for me). 

As much as I liked the event, it wasn't as good as the women's GP earlier this year. They mentioned a 170lbs GP coming and I'd actually be more interested in that that an absolute GP. 170lbs has tons of talent right now and it might be the most stacked division in BJJ. Hopefully this will go down on the November card.

I'm not going to do year to date stats in this one since WNO is tomorrow. I'll combine them in the next breakdown of that event. 

If you want to read my Play-By-Play, check it out here.

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