I had a great opponent with strong MMA and Wrestling experiences, Kelly Anundson in this professional super fight. The event was an exciting event in the biggest little city in the world with a main event featuring Marcos Torregrosa and Jerry Hallert. It was a great facility and in my opinion one of the best fight to win pro cards I’ve participated in.
One of the competitors from EDH Jiu Jitsu, Tanner Ford, won by heel hook to a leg lock veteran 10th planet competitor. Tanner looked a little cautious but maintained control of the match from start to finish. For me it was neat to coach for the first time on the fight to win card.
In my match, I lost by a unanimous referee decision. We battled the entire 8 minutes on the feet and never got to engage in a submission battle. However, I have been working on some different attacks and set ups from my feet and although I was unable to fully finish in my attacks, I’m happy with what I was able to engage. As a strategy, I think I brought too much pure wrestling to the match and should have engages in more submission wrestling to expose elements of danger.
This being the third straight week of competition for me, I noticed that a few things have engaged for the better. Although I suffered a somewhat traumatic injury two weeks ago, I’ve been able to stay patched up and compete in the European Championships and the F2W Pro 60 card. I’m very thankful for the people that have helped keep me healthy enough to compete. Thank you. It’s been a real mental exercise to stay calm and train/prepare to compete with an injury. I’ve also been able to improve my stamina. I’ve been doing interval training in my grappling practices as well as on the spin bike and I noticed a considerably quicker recovery time in this card. (I was battling hard through the end of the match) I think this will be something that I will be able to improve on during the year. There are also some skills from the feet that I’ve been working on that I was able to get to in the match. It wasn’t engaged fully, but if I can engage them on someone like Anundson, with his MMA and Wrestling power, then I will be able to do it on others. I’m confident that my training is heading in the right direction with the feedback that I’m getting. The match gave me some more ideas on things that I can develop along the way. Thank you TEAM for the preparation and support in another competition!
In general, Reno was awesome! The Komainu gym showed amazing hospitality and brought the entire town to cheer on the competitors! We stayed in the Peppermill the night of weigh-ins where I did a 5 min warm up and 5x 20sec sprints with 40 sec recovery followed by 3 min cool down on the spin bike. After this I jumped in the sauna for 20 minutes with plenty of water. This was a great pre match day training that got the elevation “shock” out of my body.
The next morning we had breakfast at the Cup Cafe, a local owned place that had AWESOME food! We went there on Saturday morning as well! After breakfast we went to Komainu Gym and I did 10 minutes of solo drills and 25 minutes of drilling and 5 minutes of rolling. I tend to overdo my warm ups so I made sure to set a timer and limit myself to 30 minutes on the mat. Later that day, I met up with the family and took my son to Circus Circus with Grandma after dinner. This was a blast!! We had so much fun!! That night we slept in the El Dorado, kinda smokey and noisy but it was close to the venue. The next day we climbed at Whitney Peak. An awesome bouldering place was indoors and I later found out that there was an actual climbing spot outside on the side of the building! I hope to visit again!