What We Learn From the AIGA North American Trials(Day 2 Final)



Day 2 of the AIGA North American Qualifer has finished and we now have our champions. Overall the show was great and you'll be able to see that yourself in the stats below. Despite the fact that some of the people I wanted to watch compete, dropped out, we still got a good event. If you want to see what happened on Day 1 check out my other post here. Now let's take a look at what happened.


Results

 Checkmat defeats Team Finishers


10th Planet defeats Fight Sports


Checkmat defeats 10th Planet


Checkmat are the champions and will be going to the championship later this year. 10th Planet was also given a spot due to their superb performance.



 Day 2 Stats 



Combined Stats


We got an overall 72% finish rate. I should mention that I didn't do every single match due to the large number of matches. I only chose matches with known grapplers in them and that could have skewed the stats slightly, but I think overall it is fairly representative of what we saw in this tournament. There were lots of finishes and overall a ton of action. This might be up there with the most finishes I've ever seen at an event. 


You're probably tired of hearing me say it by now, but the RNC came out on top again here. This was followed about the outside heelhook and then the armbar/ankle lock. There were actually quite a few subs that we don't see often as well. We almost never see an anaconda and a darce on the same card. It has been a while since I've seen an inverted armbar as well. I always prefer to get some variety instead of seeing the same subs over and over and I think these matches delivered. 



The single leg was the number 1 takedown here as usual, but there were a few other takedowns as well. The kneetap seemed particularly effective for some reason and the bodylock was doing numbers as well. 


The sub sweep got 3 completions, which is fairly standard. Surprisingly the roll over sweep was working really well. Sometimes the top player tried to roll over and then got stuck on bottom, but a few people got launched over. There seemed to be much more variety in the sweeps than I'm used to seeing. 


The half guard pass was by far the most successful pass here. The kneeslice same in next followed by the torendo and the North South pass. I was surprised that there were no bodylocks, but often times people converted to a halfguard pass midway through. 


Most of the subs came from the back, but we also got 2 saddle finishes and a finish from 50/50. I'm also happy to see a finish from mount. For the last 2 years people have been able to get to mount, but not really finish. I hope this signals a change in the skill level of top players from that position. 


 


Here we have a 8.07 action score and a 17.02 watchability score. At the end of the year I'll compare these scores with other events, but I feel like the action was great for this event. Of course there were some slow matches, but overall it was great. The amazing number of subs helped the watchability and IMO makes this event a must watch. 


Overall


This was a great event and it gets me hyped for the eventual championship later this year. Last year's championship was good and this year there should be even more big names. The only thing I can complain about is the rosters. Of course I'd like to see more high level people, but I realize that isn't always possible. However I hope they can start announcing who will be competing a bit earlier just so some hype will be built up. The Euopean, South and North American trials all had world class grapplers, but there was little hype about the events. Part of this was due to a lack of promotion, but also I think a lot of it was due to announcing the fighters too late. I think if they can fix this and increase the promotion a bit, they can get more people to watch. I do appreciate them putting the first day on youtube for free though. 

Great event overall and I'll be covering it again for the championship, where one team will win $1,000,000. 


Year to Date 


This event had quite a few subs so we got some movement on the year to date stats. I'll try to put everything into an animated chart at the end of the year, so lookout for that.








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