ADCC Post Mortem – Expectations vs Reality

What I learnt:

– I’m grateful for wrestling rules – no pushout points, no fleeing penalties and the requirement that you be taken down to your back (ie guard or half) in order to get points meant several matches needlessly went into over time. Even in judo/wrestling – being put on your butt is worth something.

– Davi Ramos is a badass, finishing Burns by RNC in the semis and Lepri in the finals, both ex no gi world champs multiple times over.

(courtesy Gambledub)

– Minus 1 for the guard pull has backfired again for the second time. I thought they would reconsider this after the epic pummeling matches in China but unfortunately no. They should at least have given a point for an escape of the bottom (ala wrestling), so you could risk -1 and if you got nothing going, get up and get +1.

Expectations and Gambling Odds were way off

At the start of ADCC , I took a poll on winner expectations. This is what we got:

Going into the semis, another poll showed which of the final fours were favored by the crowd. In red, you can see who the eventual winner was.

Here is where the bookies saw the favorites (in red):



Lots of surprises this year! Not to mention Claudio Calasans winning the absolute. Some of the winners were huge long shots (Davi Ramos +1500) or didn’t even register in the crowd’s consciousness (Ana Laura had 0% of the vote for +66kg female, pre-event and at the semis).

All in all though, there were some decent matches and several questions were answered about the viability of specialist leg lockers in an ADCC setting (Cummings & Tonon were out pointed eventually).

Matches of the tournament for me:

– Dern v Nicolini

– Pena v Rodolfo

– Vagner Rocha v Romulo and Otavio (Vagner is no joke, someone smashed his odds down from +5000 to +1100, not a bad choice all being said)

– Jeff Glover v Geo Martinez

– Garry Tonon v Dillion Danis

– Pena v Jimmy Friedrich (if you want to study some footwork for no-gi passing)

Looking forward to Polaris 2 on 12 Sept! Remember to check out my upcoming preview study on that.