Matwork! Qingdao Judo Grand Prix Results, Midlands Contenders, Year's Best Awards, Christmas Grappling Videos and More

by Ben Thapa on Dec 22, 2011 5:00 PM EST in Grappling News

Recent happenings in the worlds of sambo, judo, Brazilian jiu jitsu, submission grappling and/or collegiate/freestyle wrestling. If it takes place on the ground and it's interesting, it should be here.

This issue is hitting your eyeballs nine days before the end of 2011. As an opportunity for a fresh start, assuming no end of the world shenanigans actually happen, 2012 is fast approaching and most of the major combat sports have shut down for the holidays. Nevertheless, there are still events going on, videos to watch and articles to digest.

First, feast your eyes on a terrific combination of scrambles and throws to close out the men's 60 kg finals in the Qingdao IJF Grand Prix. Georgii Zantaraia (Ukraine) went OFF at the end of the match and threw Naohisa Takato (Japan) for ippon with a soto makikomi. The video kicks off at the beginning of some serious action, yet if you've got some time, the whole match is fairly entertaining. Peep this clip and join me after the jump for more combat sports goodness.

If you have any links of your own, questions or comments, leave them below or get word to me at DefGrappler on Twitter. Please let me know if I missed anything major and I will fix this, that and the other thing.

A list of official crew Twitter accounts is right here for your pickings: BloodyElbow Twitter, Luke Thomas, Kid Nate, Brent Brookhouse, Leland Roling, Richard Wade, Chris Barton, Damon O,Scott Broussard, Tim Burke, Matt Bishop, Fraser Coffeen, Dallas Winston, KJ Gould, Matt Roth, Anton Tabuena.

Wrestling News:

It's winter time. X-Mas is right around the corner. Most college students are already home on break, stuffing their faces with home cooked bakery and figuring out ways to sneak off and party with friends they've missed. Dedicated (and unpaid) collegiate athletes are still watching their diet and sneaking into the gym to get those workouts in and ensuring that their competitors don't outwork them. This particularly holds true for wrestlers.

The 2011 Midlands will be held at Northwestern University on December 29th and 30th. This is the big mid-season tournament, as most of the top individual wrestlers in each weight division will come and battle for the prestigious title. As the cherry on the top of that grappling sundae, the Midlands often feature a Super Match in which now-graduated college stars or Olympic-caliber wrestlers go against each other. Last year's Super Match was between Ben Askren and Jake Herbert, who is now second on the U.S. national team at 84 kg (behind Cael Sanderson).

This may be a bunch of complete hot air, but Chael Sonnen was talking about how this year's Super Match would be between Askren and Jordan Burroughs, the new golden boy and current world champion at 74 kg. Burroughs and Askren have denied it on Twitter, yet it could still be possible.

Anyways, the current rough draft of a line-up for the 2011 Midlands has been released. Note that there are some differences between that list of contenders and the InterMat rankings (updated and released here).

The international freestyle scene has largely shut down for the holidays, so here's perhaps the silliest-looking scramble I've ever seen in folkstyle wrestling, courtesy of Flowrestling.

Watch more video of Dirty Flo Scramble 2011-2012 on flowrestling.org

I give much respect to those wrestlers for putting in all that hard work and not giving up, but that's funny stuff.

Judo News:

As mentioned above, the Qindao IJF Grand Prix was held over three days from Friday, December 16th, to Sunday, December 19th. JudoInside has the results, medal table and other cool stuff. This was another strong event, although not quite as many top ranked competitors showed up as did for the Grand Slam in Tokyo. A decent smattering of videos can be found on YouTube (especially the lighter weight finals), but the more spectacular matches and moments have not made the internetz yet. Maybe you readers will be content with the bucketfuls of video from last week's Tokyo Grand Slam.

As can be seen on the World Rankings, several top 10 competitors among the various divisions showed up in Qingdao and had differing amounts of success. IntJudo has three good recaps of each individual day on their site. I have only been following judo for a short time, but homecourt advantage really does seem to have an effect. The Chinese judoka won the most medals here, with the Koreans second and the Japanese third. A couple of red cards (for illegal leg-based techniques) and penalty points were decisive factors in several of the semis and finals, which is kind of a shame. To continue the long tradition of America-centric news cherrypicking, U.S. judoka, Kayla Harrison won the women's 70 kg final with an ippon throw of the 2008 Beijing Olympic champion, Yang Xiuli. Big ups to her for the gold medal.

Now that the judo season is at a close, we can come up with some of the better throws out there. I'm partial to the following throw by Artem Vaslyenko from the European Championships in the finals of the 81 kg. The technique has an actual name - sode tsurikomi goshi - and has been used many times in competition, yet in this match, Vaslyenko makes it look like pure magic.

There's a decent compilation of ippons from Judo Scotland here, but I think finding a true 2011 Ippon of the Year is going to take quite a while of trawling through videos. This highlights of the World Championship ippons is a good starting point. This one might be my second favorite though, as Audrey Tcheumeo (France) footsweeps Akari Ogata (Japan) for the ippon:

Submission Grappling/Brazilian Jiu Jitsu News:

The results of Aesopian's Gi Survey are now out. The idea of the project was to take ratings of various gis owned by grapplers filling out the survey and then chop up the data to spit out some useful stuff. The project succeeded and Aesopian is now chopping up the data in bursts and will make the information available when he is ready. For now, he's released a short post that shows that the top 30 some brands essentially have little difference in overall customer satisfaction.

This means that for the most part, gi companies are doing a good job, but also shows that crowd-sourcing which particular gi to buy for your individual tastes is probably not a good idea. Sizes and shapes vary among people and also among gis. Pay attention to shrinkage rates. I suggest that you go to your grappling teammates, find one that you like the looks and feel of and get that one. Or experiment and go get something that nobody there has ever heard of.

My favorite bit of seeing the "We Are All One" slogan at work through combat sports this week has to be the ADCC Serbian Open. The quick results and some photos are available on the ADCC website. Genki Sudo may have retired and moved on to Japan's pop music scene, but that spirit of unity through beating the heck out of each other within the confines of sensible rules is still alive and strong. There is a strange and strong bond between people who have just grappled each other and I genuinely think this is somewhat key to world peace.

The Renzo Gracie Open was held this past weekend within the MMA World Expo event held nearly on the waterfront of Hell's Kitchen. The results and video are not up yet, but I will keep you updated.

The results of the Naga Worlds event that was slightly overlooked last week (no information available at that time) are now out.

David over at the Jiu Jisu Laboratory blog has his 2011 BJJ Awards up. I agree with most of what's in here - particularly awarding Leandro Lo Pereira the Rookie of the Year award. Beating Celso Venicius and Michael Langhi within one tournament is going to turn heads. Stomping through the Brazilian competitions all year long, as Leandro Lo did, is cementing your place with style. I disagree with Competition of the Year, as I thought the Abu Dhabi Pro was better run than the ADCCs and featured a bit better BJJ. Best Throw has to go to Leo Vieira for his massive first round ADCC seo nagi (sadly the video was taken down, so I can't link you to it).

Watch Augusto "Tanquinho" Mendes roll with Rafael "Formiga" Barbosa. This is high level grappling, courtesy of BJJ Weekly, and will show you what you are working towards. Formiga is narrating, so try to get through the Brazilian accent and enjoy a caipirinha while watching, if you like (and if it's legal for you to do so).

Ricardo Abreu has one of my favorite Brazilian jiu jitsu nicknames ever in "Demente" (for his habit of purposely leaving an arm out for an opponent to seize onto before countering with a pass). He left elite competitive grappling for a while to work as a lawyer for a few years, but came back and started transitioning to an MMA career.

Five days ago, he won his second pro fight at 205 lbs in 24 seconds on a card for BRFC - Desafio de Imortais in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Video of the knockout is here, but it seems like Leo Rocha, his opponent, caved before Abreu could display some serious skills. His July fight, which lasted a minute and change, displayed a bit more of his skills. A couple days later, Celso Venicius won a short match by submission to punches (from mount) at Face to Face 5 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Again, not as competitive as I'd like to see, but good prospects generally make short work of opponents.

Demente reminds me of a slightly larger, much nicer version of Palhares with armbars being his particular submission love affair. Could be worth keeping an eye on, as he works his way through the Brazilian MMA scene. Celso Venicius is probably not going to make big waves in the lightweight division, but he could make a run in a lower division and his grappling is very, very good as well. Hopefully, I didn't steal any of Leland and Smoogy's thunder here.

Odds and Ends:

For those of you grapplers who have back trouble, try doing some of the exercises from this post by Christian Graugart. I am going to start doing them just to loosen things up and to head off some stuff with my sacroiliac joint that I can feel coming on. Note: this is not medical advice and you should consult with your doctors about your beat up body before doing anything crazy.

Braulio Estima has a pretty decent sense of humor. He's also willing to make himself look silly in the pursuit of laughs. Check out how Santa Braulio gets a reindeer into the X-Mas spirit.