What We Learned from the IBJJF 2024 Nogi GP

 

This is the first Nogi pro event the IBJJF has done in a while. They loaded this up with some big names, but as we all know that doesn't garuntee an exciting event. They also had some interesting gi matches as well including Kade Ruotolo's return to the gi. Let's see how it turned out. 

Results

 Kaynan Duarte def. Haisam Rida via arm triangle

 Dante Leon def. Elder Cruz via advantage

 Giancarlo Bodoni def. Patrick Gaudio via advantage

Pedro Rocha def. Roosevelt Sousa via advantage

 Kaynan Duarte def. Dante Leon via points

Giancarlo Bodoni def. Pedro Rocha via points

 Kaynan Duarte def. Giancarlo Bodoni via points

 

Kaynan Duarte wins the 2024 IBJJF Nogi GP

How People Won

Check out some of the matches here

Stats

We only got 1 sub here. The arm triangle from Kaynan Duarte. There were a few more attempts, but overall there wasn't much submission action here. We got 8 sub attempts in 7 matches. That's shameful.  

Many people pulled guard, so we really didn't see too many takedowns, but there were 2 that succeeded. A throw by and a mat return were able to score and I think they both done by Giancarlo Bodoni. Surprisingly the single leg wasn't working here with 7 attempts and no success to be seen. 

Here is where we got some action. There were 2 wrestle ups, a half guard sweep and a roll over sweep. There were 13 attempts and 4 sweeps, which isn't too bad. There was some good activity in this category. 

We got 1 pass here. Kaynan hit 2 knee slices on his way to a victory over Haisam Rida. People seemed to be having some problems passing half guard. There was a good variety of passes, but nothing was really working. 

 

Surprisingly we saw a sub from the mount, but none of the other positions produced anything. I always love to see the mount get some subs and prove it is one of the better finishing positions. 

The 2023 action average was 6.5 per 5min and 1.68 techniques per 5 min. This was the 2nd lowest action score I've seen so far and the technique score is the lowest I have on record. I haven't been doing this for long, but those are the facts. The fact that the 2 bottom scores come from IBJJ shows that there is a real problem that needs to be addressed. 

Overall

This breakdown was a bit shorter than some of the others due to the other 2 events coming. I'll be doing posts on those too and a video going over all of them. Now let's get into this event. I would have liked to have seen more action at this event. The Tainan Dalpra, Kade Ruotolo and Andy Murasaki Gi matches were pretty good, but many of the GP matches were lacking in action. I don't know if IBJJF wanted to show that gi can be more exciting than nogi or what, but too many of these matches were dragged out affairs with few techniques to be seen. I don't know exactly what they need to do, but this wasn't it. I've seen worse shows of course, but 1 sub in 7 matches is nasty work. The athletes weren't necessarily stalling, but they were doing a lot of nothing and not really getting into positions. I'm hoping they choose not to do heavy weights at their next GP and stick to some of the lighter weight classes. That said, I'm glad that the IBJJF is trying to do more to get people paid and they seem to be changing the rules a bit to make things more exciting. They haven't gotten there yet, but they are at least moving in the right direction. 

There are 2 more big events soon, Fightpass Invitational 6 and the 1st ADCC South American trials. I'll do a video for all 3 soon and there will be a blog post for each. I'll update the Year to Date stats at the end.