Ruotolo vs Langaker 2 & Pit Submission Series 1

2024 Is here and The Grappling Conjecture is here to cover it. So far things have been a little quiet in January, but they are going to be heating up next month. We do have a few matches that we are going to cover today though. Kade Ruotolo and Tommy Langaker had a rematch on ONEfc 165 & a new event called Pit Submission Series, had its first event. This new event was just an experiment made by Karate Combat and was hosted by the Miyao brothers. What makes it unique is the fact that it is done with inclined walls which prevent people from going out of bounds. The concept was very interesting and the walls worked as advertised. Hopefully they do more of these events in the future

Let's get into the results now.

 Results

Helena Crevar def Kaitlyn Murdock via Dead Orchard(armbar)

Vagner Rocha def Luke Griffith via dec

Max Gimenes def Dan Mansiou via dec

Kade Ruotolo  def Tommy Langaker via dec

Unfortunately there weren't many subs, but that doesn't make the matches bad. That said, I'd still like see more subs. Helena got the lone sub here and I think she is getting a reputation as a finisher. This will help her in the future and I'm sure there are tons of promotions knocking down her door now. I thought the rest of the match ups were pretty good, but perhaps PSS should have chosen different people if they wanted more subs for their first event. Big Dan is known for his submissions, but Max is on a different level than the people he usually fights. Luke vs Vagner was a good match on paper, but the size difference along with Vagner's tricky game meant this was likely to go to a decision. I hope that in the future there are more PSS grappling matches and perhaps they should try some smaller guys to get more action. Overall I though they were good and they actually got good names for their first show. 

Stats

Let's take a look first at submissions. The Dead Orchard was the only submission in these matches. There were a number of attempts though. There were 2 darce attempts by Kade Ruotolo and 2 wrist lock attempts by Max Gimenes. There were other sub attempts as well, but to be honest most of them were by Max and Kade. 

Also I apologize for the somewhat small charts. I'm trying to work some kinks out, so bare with me. 

11 sub attempts and 1 finish. 8.3% finish rate. 

 

Now we have the takedowns, which were a bit more successful. We go a wide variety of takedowns here and a few rare ones, such as the kosoto gari and slide-by. People seem to be working more on these types of takedowns rather than the standard shot, although that scored as well. Vagner also hit a throw-by on Luke Griffith against the wall, which made Luke trip. Vagner couldn't quite finish, but this was an interesting strategy that I think will be used more in the future. 

14 takedown attempts and 4 finishes. 22% success rate.

Just like the submissions, we only saw 1 sweep, which was a sub sweep. This came from Kade Ruotolo when he used a guillotine grip to sweep Langaker. There were a number of halfguard sweep attempts, mostly by Langaker, but none of them were able to score. Langaker also went for a number of matrix back takes, but Kade managed to wiggle away each time. 

9 sweep attempts and 1 finish. 10% success rate.

The torreando came out on top here, by a large margin. Most of these were actually Max hitting these when Big Dan was gassed out. There was also a bodylock pass by Vagner I believe. There were quite a few half guard pass attempts, but nobody was able to make it to a dominant position. 

13 pass attempts and 5 finishes. 27.7%  success rate.

None of the dominant positions resulted in a sub this time. Sidecontrol was reached 3 times and the back was achieved twice. One thing I should note here is that both of the back positions were actually the crucifix. I added that position 2 years ago, however it doesn't seem like it is used much, so I decided to fold it into the back position. However in the first event this year it was used twice in one match. Maybe I'll bring it back if it becomes really popular this year, but for now I don't think it is used enough to have its own category. 

Action

We have more action stats based on activity per 5 min. I think the 2 big ones are the technique per min and action per min. The 2023 action average was 6.5 per 5min and 1.68 techniques per 5 min. These matches fell a bit below this, which is a bit disappointing. In general I think if the action score is under 5, the event isn't that good. I felt these matches had a decent amount of action, but of course there were lulls in the action. Especially in the Vagner and Luke match. I hope that in the future, a stalling clock will be added to PSS. I think the Kade Tommy match was fairly action packed though. 

Thoughts on the Matches

I decided to start a youtube channel as well and I thought I'd share my thoughts on there. I'm not sure exactly what kind of content I'm going to put on there, so leave me messages telling me what you're interested in seeing. For now take a look and see what I thought of these 2 events.

Overall

These were good events. I hope to see more PSS events in the future. The pit is unique and I believe it solves a problem that plagues many other BJJ events. They seem to have decent match making and I enjoyed the matches. The Kade/Tommy rematch was great. The first one was close and this one was just as action packed. Kade really showed he should have the belt and clearly took this one. I don't know what is next for him, but it looks like he is going to MMA soon. Hopefully we still get some good matches out of him. Keep your eyes peeled for new articles and subscribe to my new YouTube channel. I'll be doing year to date stats later as we get more events.  

You can watch all the matches from PSS down below on the Karate Combat live stream.