The 2016 IBJJF Pans were both exciting, encouraging, and a little disappointing. In all tournaments there is the feeling that I leave with more than what I came with. I learn something new about the game, myself, and the people around me. It’s an exciting adventure to test my skills and see how comfortable I have become with the uncomfortable battle of the will.

The training leading up to the tournament was great. I had the opportunity to train with black belts Michel Miyashita and Bill Vella on a daily basis in El Dorado Hills, Marcos Torregrosa in Sacramento when I could make the visit to his academy. Ty Silva prepared my strength and conditioning program at his studio One Body in El Dorado Hills. I had Dr. Petrice Foxworthy DCC help with some injuries I encountered along the way. We hosted a Pans Mini Camp 2 weeks prior to the tournament to allow for some intense training where Tanner Rice & co. and Gustavo Enriquez participated. This included about 13 hours of training in 3 days! I incorporated some extreme temperature therapy into the routine as well. In my opinion this was one of the most prepared I had been going into a tournament! Here is a summary of the tournament experience:

Open Class Division

round of 64: Eliot Kelly v Guilherme Santos 0-2points  3-1adv

Lost my opening match to a close one in the last 90 seconds of the match. I was winning with advantage points, but Guilherme was able to secure a sweep with about 90 seconds left in the match. I came back with a sweep attempt to get on top but he was able to stay on his feel as we flurried to a neutral position. There was about 2 seconds left on the clock when the referee brought us back to start from the center of the mat.  Guilherme was one of the newer black belts and I wasn’t sure how he would play out. He was tough! He was relentless in his guard. I took about 30 seconds to reposition myself and catch my breath and that was all it took for him to set up his sweep. Instead of posturing up to reposition myself and catch my breath, I should have remained in my stance and kept the press. This would have prevented his sweep set up and attack.

I was surprised to see Guilherme do very well in the rest of the tournament. He had a very close 3-0 defeat to Leandro Lo in the open class and finished with a Bronze in the heavy weight division. I think I had undermined his potential as a new black belt. Congrats to him on his performance!

Super Heavy Weight Division

Round of 16: Eliot Kelly v Jose Dos Santos jr. 0-0 0-0 1-1penalty Referee Decision

This was a pretty boring match… Sorry…. Almost the entire match we stayed on our feet and we battled it out. I believe I had about 5-7 takedown attempts that led to us going out of bounds but I wasn’t awarded any advantage points from. The match ended in a draw with a penalty for both Jose and I.

Round of 8: Eliot Kelly v Luiz Panza 0-4 1-0 0-1

This was an exciting match. Panza pulled immediately, but he does the jump into a pull which doesn’t start with a grip and in my opinion I could have scored a takedown point depending on the perspective of the referee in that match. In the future I plan to jump away as they jump in next time instead of engage the guard. This happened twice in the match and could have influenced the outcome. Luiz has a very dynamic guard that involves the 50/50 position, him going inverted for the knee bar and a sit up guard. I think his time training at Barbosa with Murillo Santana gave him the edge to prevent and sweep me from the Murillo style pressure passing. In the future I plan to play more of a combat base style of passing that involves going around the hips with leg drags to possible take the back. Like my first match I had a near sweep to potentially get ahead on the score from the deep half. However, Luiz was able to maintain balance as we went out of bounds off my sweep attempt while on our feet.

He went on to put together a great performance beating Yuri Simoes, and Alexandro Ceconi to win the Pans. Congrats!

Getting Better

There are a few positions I can improve as I reflect from the tournament. I need to secure the sweep when I come up. If I touch this up I would have scored a total of 4 points in two matches. That would have influenced the result of at least one of the matches. This is the biggest improvement that will pay off in the future.

Some of the other positions were more strategic than technical and involved understanding the type of game I was going to be playing against. All three guys from this weekend were my first time rolling with. In the future I will be adjusting how I play my strategy from my feet as well as on top. If my adjustments are correct, I should score 2-4 more points. which would definitely won me the matches I lost.