What We Learned from the 1st ADCC South American Trials

I'm back for the 1st South American Trials in Brazil. We now have 5 new people going to ADCC. We had a few big names, but unfortunately not as many as previous years. However the next South American trials are next week and I believe more people are signed up for those. Check back next week when I cover those trials.

Results

Men's

-66kg Kenedy Maciel (2nd Kaua Gabriel, 3rd Igor Moreira)

-77kg Luiz Medeiros (2nd Jefferson Ponta, 3rd Alexandre Joaquim De Jesus)

-88kg Charles Negromonte(2nd Gabriel Almeida, 3rd Andre Porfirio )

-99kg Cassio Costa (2nd Elioani Julio 3rd Daniel Ladero)

+99kg  Jose Inacio ( 2nd Antonio Assef, 3rd Leandro Rodrigues)

Women's

-55kg Brenda Larissa(2nd Gabriela Mendes, 3rd  Raquel Ferreira Da Silva) 

-65kg  Ana Keyla Cunha Queiroz(2nd Janie Fragoso, 3rd  Ághata Fernandes)

+65kg Maria Ruffatto(2nd Joana Santana, 3rd Maria Mirian Costa)

How People Won

Before we get any further, I thought I'd mention that I only tracked the semi-final, final and 3rd place matches here. Due to the amount of matches I can't do them all, but this will give you a bit of a snapshot. It should be noted that the deeper you go into the tournament the more difficult it becomes and therefore you might see fewer submissions. I feel like we got a respectable amount of subs here. 42% of the finishes were submissions with most of them being chokes, followed by leglocks and finally arm submission. This is the normal ratio that I've come to expect over the years. 

Stats

The RNC was by far the best submission during these trials. The inside and outside heelhook scored 2 subs each along with the armbar. The ankle lock was tried a lot, but only yielded 1 submission. Overall I feel there was a good amount of variety and the flying armbar by Gabriel Almeida was especially impressive. 

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The single leg was king here, but there were a lot of misses. It seemed a lot of people were having problems with their wrestling here. Unfortunately there was a lot of clubbing and finger entanglements, instead of solid takedown attempts throughout these matches. I hope this is penalized more in the future as I feel this strategy sucked the energy out of the event. 

We don't need this is pro grappling

There were about 5 passes, with the halfguard pass scoring twice. However it failed 12 times. It is surprising that there weren't more passes, and really there weren't a ton of attempts either. It seems guard play for both top and bottom weren't very effective. 

Sweeps had 5 successes as well. Kiss of the Dragon worked twice, but they were both by the same person in the same match. There was also a roll over sweep and a wrestle up to a single leg. There were a lot of attempts at Single Leg X sweeps and half guard sweeps, but none of the attempts were able to be converted into points. 

The back came out on top here. The back seemed like an instant win here with only 1 person escaping. 50/50 also scored 1 submission as well. The other positions were used, but mostly as transitions. 

We got an action score of 5.15 and a technique score of 1.31. The average for last year was was 6.5 per 5min and 1.68 techniques per 5 min. This falls below that and overall I think this events was a bit less exciting than some others. There were definitely lots of good moments and matches, but there were also lots of boring matches that don't have much going on. They can't all be winners and I'm sure the earlier rounds were better in terms of action. 

Overall

This was a pretty good event, but there were definitely some bad matches in there. The men's divisions of -66kgs, -77kgs and -88kgs were fun and action packed. The others were a bit slower and had less action. I hope in the future the refs get more active with their stalling calls and perhaps we will get that next with the Fight Pass Invitational coming in a few hours. I'll be doing that tomorrow and I'll update the year to date stats at that time, so look out for that post.