There are numerous reasons that the ADCC Submission Fighting World Championships is a special event. It only comes around every two years, the rules are the most wide-open of any tournament, only the best athletes are present and the participants must be invited by a member of the U.A.E. royal family like some kind of death-match tournament in a Shaw Brothers film circa 1978. This year’s tournament more than lived up to the uniqueness that one associates with the ADCC.
The 2011 ADCC was hosted at the Capital One arena in Nottingham, England and was broadcast live over the internet by BudoVideos. Those who made the effort to watch the tournament, including myself and many others who made the effort to wake-up at an unreasonable hour to watch, were rewarded with a two-day showcase of the best techniques, strategies and athletes that submission grappling has to offer.
The standard showcased was world class. A few things that surprised me was the frequency of leg locks being attempted and finsihed. For me, it was great to see how the best in the world approached certain subjects such as opening the guard, passing the half guard and how they approached the stand up game.
There were few flaws in the tournament but those that existed should really be addressed. The tournament was very well run so that only three mats were needed to keep the schedule moving. This opened up a substantial amount of space on the floor of the arena that unfortunately wasn’t put to good use. This was manifested primarily in the lack of padding surrounding the small Dollamur mats, which led to many tumbles onto the hard surface as contestants frequently drove out of bounds.
There were some complaints that the liberal leg lock rules resulted in multiple injuries – including Rafael Lovato Jr., Rodolfo Vieira, David Avellan and even Rafael Mendes. However, the competitors are all high-level professionals who knew what they were getting themselves into and knew the risks of not tapping to leg locks. Unfortunately Avellan was intentionally injured after the ref had attempted to stop his match with UFC middleweight Rousimar “Toquinho” Palhares. All in all, this was a great event it was great watching the worlds finest grapplers.
