I love the new look of the lightweight division in our country. Thomas Gilman took the 57kg spot from Tony Ramos last year and won our first world lightweight medal since Cejudo in 2008.

This year, Gilman’s opponent will be another up and coming star in Daton Fix at Final X in Lincoln, NE, on June 9. If you’re not familiar with Fix by now, please stop reading this and go do your homework.

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Rate Of Growth

I’ve been talking a lot to Nomad about just how staggering it is to watch the rate of growth of our youngest senior-level athletes. They just seem to be able to pick up new skills better and sooner than some of the old dogs. The adjustments that Daton Fix made in just a few short weeks from the U.S. Open to the World Team Trials was a ton of fun to watch.

While I don’t think that Fix's ability to turn people is any news to anyone, most of us expected to see Fix's patented leg-in trap-arm gut. While we did see him attempt it as much as advertised, what was frightening (for opponents) was how well he abandoned the trap arm and went to a straight low gut when his opponent tried to defend the trap arm by putting their left arm all the way up in front of them. Check out Fix's WTTs quarterfinal match here. If you go to 1:12 you'll see Eddie Klimara over-defend the trap arm and Daton goes gut to the right for a quick 2.

Another thing that we saw a bit more of in the World Team Trials from Fix was a left-handed underhook. More times than not, Fix is more than willing to allow guys to shoot an underhook to his left side because he's always got his inside trip in his back pocket. Against Ramos in the WTT finals, it was Fix shooting the underhooks and pushing around Ramos.

...One Kick 10,000 Times

Gilman may not have the same amount of offensive weapons as Fix, but what he does have, he employs almost perfectly. Gilman’s offense basically boils down to a single leg.

Before you start writing his offensive repertoire off completely, keep two things in mind. First, he’s got a single to both sides. He goes inside reach to your left leg and he goes swing/sweep single to your right leg. Secondly, he shows incredible poise while he’s in on a leg. One of the deciding factors for Fix against Ramos was his ability to scramble out of his opponent's single leg. I'm not too sure that Gilman will leave that position to chance. Gilman is very deliberate when he finishes a single leg.

A perfect example is Gilman’s match in last year’s World Team Trials against one of the best scramblers in our country, Nico Megaludis. Not only did Gilman go 3 for 3 in scoring on his single legs against a great defensive wrestler, but he also transitioned one of them into a turn. Check the match out below.

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Hand Fighting May Be The Difference

The hand-fight is the part of this matchup that I am most excited for. Everyone knows that if the match stayed in the center circle and they traded right hands, Gilman would be happier than a butcher's dog. However, Fix's ability to dictate the pace and specifics of the hand-fight is vastly underrated.

In fact, I went back and looked at the three matches with Ramos that Fix had over the last two months, and Fix's hand-fighting pace may have been the difference. In the U.S. Open bout that Fix wound up losing, there were more moments of inactivity in which Fix spent time resting in an over tie. Fix's pace and activity of hand-fighting, especially from that over tie, was far superior to his own efforts in Rochester, MN. Every time Ramos started to make gains in position from a collar tie, Fix would go over tie and violently slam it down to the ground.

To take things a step further, when Fix wasn’t actively engaged in the hand-fight, his level change from the outside straightened Ramos’ legs. The combination of those two things are difficult to deal with to say the least. Take a look at the video below, the first clip is of the U.S. Open, Fix's left-hand stays pretty stagnant for the batter part of 20 seconds, whereas in the second clip (WTT’s Bout 1) Fix effectively clears Ramos’ collar tie and level changes from the outside.





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