What We Learned from Polaris 27 WW GP

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This has to be one of the biggest events of the year and we got a lot of good matches. We got a welterweight GP and 2 title matches. Keith Krakorian fought Cam Donnelly for the lightweight title and Ffion Davies faced Brianna Ste-Marie for the strawweight title. Before we get into stats and other stuff, lets look at the results.


  

Results


 Keith Krakorian def. Cam Donnelly via  Armbar

 Nathaniel Woods def. Alex Caceres via decision

 PJ Barch def. Luiz Paulo via decision

Levi Jones-Leery def. Shane Curtis via RNC

 Epsen Mathiesen def. Max Hansen via dec

Jozef Chen def. Harrison Wood via Kimura

 PJ Barch def. Epsen Mathiesen via Inside heelhook
 
 Levi Jones-Leery def. Jozef Chen via points

Ffion Davies def. Brianna Ste-Marie via points

PJ Barch def. Levi Jones-Leery via points



How People Won




We got 40% subs here, which isn't a great number, but it isn't too bad either. There were a lot of decisions, but 1 of the matches didn't have points, so that inflated the stat a bit. Arm locks were leading here, which is a bit unusual, but it happens sometimes. We also got 1 choke and a leglock. There were also 3 point victories as well. I think this event showed that there are times when points and monetary incentives can make people play more tactically and not go 100% all the time. That is too bad, but I understand people are doing this for a living, so I can't fault them. That said, the matches weren't really bad, but I do wish a few of the matches had more drive toward a finish. 




Stats



There were 4 different submissions and all of them each had 1 finish. The RNC was the most attempted followed by the anklelock and the inside heelhoook. There were some outside heelhooks attempted as well, but at this event it wasn't working. 






Surprisingly the kouchi gari came out on top here. Nathaniel Woods accounts for most of these, but a few others tried these as well. The usual suspects, single and double legs showed up as well, with them accounting for 2 takedowns a piece. There was also a kosoto gari which came as a counter to a kouchi gari. Foot sweeps seem to be getting more and more popular these days, but the good old singles and doubles still work. 


Watch Christian Ozbek's match on the prelims if you want to see some beutiful nogi Judo.




There were only a few sweeps, but shockingly the most common one was the berimbolo. This was mostly done by Levi Jones-Leery. Often Levi would go for the berimbolo and then once the opponent defended, Levi would just stand up and get the sweep. Many times he chained it directly into a legdrag. It should be noted that 1 or 2 of those were actually 70/30 transitions into crabrides, but I figured the berimbolo was the closest thing. 

There were also 50/50 sweeps, matrix sweeps/backtakes and armdrags. You can see above the breakdown of what was used. Surprisingly the single leg wrestle up wasn't working, but I beleive this was mostly due to who was on top. It is hard to wrestle up on former D1 wrestler PJ Barch. 




The leg drag and halfguard pass came out on top here. The legdrag came out of a bolo and showed this this is a viable technique in nogi to sweep and pass the guard in one smooth motion. There were a lot of torreando pass attempts, but only one actually resulted in a pass. Usually the kneeslice is a good option, but it didn't find any success here.

 


The back, 50/50 and side control were positions we saw finishes from here. Side control submissions seem a bit rare these days, but we got one here. There was a thread on reddit recently talking about the lack of kimuras in high level events. Well you got one here. I'm a bit surprised there were more back finishes, but perhaps the other athlete's defense was just too good. 


 

Action




The average for last year was was 6.5 per 5min and 1.68 techniques per 5 min. This event passes both of those with a 7.63 action score and a 1.81 technique score. As you can see this was an exciting event with a lot of stuff going on. Although I did complain about the tactical play in a few of the matches, I don't think anyone was really stalling and there weren't any matches that were unwatchable. You can't ask for much more than that. 

Overall

This was a very good event and if you're looking something to watch for technical study, give this a look. Epsen and Levi showed you can use a berimbolo heavy style in nogi and give people trouble. I hope they continue to do nogi in the future. 

I was happy that PJ Barch finally got a big win. It seems like for the past few years he has always gotten close to the top, but something happened. This was a good event for 10th Planet with PJ and Keith both becoming champions. I'd like to see them more on Polaris in the future. 

I missed Davis Asare and I hope he gets his weight issues under control. Epsen, Levi and Harrison Wood all impressed me and I think they should get more matches on Polaris. Finally Ffion looked great as always. Her match with Brianna started off fairly even, but then Ffion just ran away with it and even showed a few new tricks. Ffion can play guard too and has even learned some leglocks. The women at ADCC better look out. 

This was a great even by Polaris and I hope they continue to do GPs, especially with the smaller competitors. -66kgs, -77kgs, -88kgs all have lots of exciting fighters that would love to compete on a big stage. Good show as usual and I can't wait until the next Polaris.



Year to Date Stats



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