What We Learned from Polaris 29

Polaris 29 just finished and we got a pretty good show, but not without some bumps along the road. The biggest bump was Felipe Andrew being pulled from the card. He was recently sanctioned by USADA for an anti-doping violation. They pulled him off the card, which was disappointing for me as someone who was excited after his CJI performance. However as someone who supports cleaning up the sport, it might be the right decision. I'm sure it was a hard one for them, but I understand. 

The matches themselves were a mix of gi and nogi matches and they seemed to increase the amount of gi matches compared to what I remember to have them before. I don't usually cover gi matches, so they aren't included in the stats, but you can see the results below. 

Results

Cam Donnelly def Dom Dillion via inside heelhook

Jed Hue def Julian Espenosa via dec

Davis Asare def George Pearse via dec

Cole Abate def Sam McNally via dec(gi)

Tainan Dalpra def Tarik Hopstock via kimura(gi)

Mohammed Avtarhanov def Jacob Rodriguez via dec

Deigo "Pato" Oliveria def Ash Williams via dec(gi)

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How People Won

Here we have 1 submission and 3 decisions. Of course I'd like to see more subs, but with only 4 matches it is a bit hard. A 25% sub rate isn't that bad, but it isn't particularly impressive either. There was a lot of good action, but it didn't produce a lot of subs. 

Stats

The only sub here was the inside heelhook. Jay Rod and George Pearse were certainly trying their hardest to finish, but they just couldn't get it done. We got 8 RNC attempts, but no finishes, which is a bit rare. To be fair many of them were over the jaw, which makes the finish harder.

It seems like there weren't any takedowns. That seems almost impossible, but maybe it did happen. There isn't really much to talk about here besides some attempts at single legs and uchimata attempts. 

We got a sub sweep and a hook sweep here. There were some wrestle up attempts as well, but none of them were able to be completed.

We saw 2 halfguard passes and the return on the bodylock pass with 2 completions. The bodylock has seemed to have dropped in popularity a bit in the last year or 2, but here was saw 2 of them. The toreando and north-south pass were also fairly popular as well, but there weren't any completions. 

The saddle racked up 1 finish and there were 4 completed back takes. Surprisingly there were no finishes from the back, but that happens sometimes.

Here we have an 11.41 action score and a 14.30 watchability score. Honestly neither of these are that bad, so don't let the low number of subs fool you. The matches were still good. Cam Donnelly did a lot of the heavy lifting with his super quick submission, but the other matches had lots of action as well. 

Thoughts

From a purely selfish point of view I'd like more nogi matches, so I have more to cover, but here the gi matches were fine. As long as the gi matches don't turn into stallfests I'm ok with them and I didn't think any of these matches were bad at all. They were were actually pretty entertaining. 

I think the big thing that people were talking about after this was the judging. I can't really blame the judges here, but more the rules themselves. The matches are 10 min(which I think is a good amount of time), but they are judged in 3 separate periods. This seemed to cause some problems where 1 person would slightly win 2 rounds, but get absolutely killed in the other. Mohamed even admitted that he though Jay Rod won the match, but due to this rule he got the win. I'd like to see this changed and judge the matches as a whole. Polaris has been good about adjusting their rules and I think they'll be able to come up with a solution that will get rid of this controversy in the future. 

Overall

This was a good event, but not great. There people that I didn't expect much from really impressed me and overall the was a lot of good technique going on. I'm guessing since CJI and ADCC just finished there were a lot of people who they couldn't book, so I guess this was a good time for gi matches. I liked that they brought in Cam Donnelly, who has been looking good recently. Polaris has developed some European talent now and I'm actually rooting for some of the UK grapplers even though I've never been there. 

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