Some 15 minutes after my match at the GB Seattle invitational, Kevin comes up and asks me if I fought yet and who. I reply, "Yeah, Sauleh." and am almost flattered that he then asked how it went.
For those not in attendance on Saturday, my match with Sauleh went like all my matches with Sauleh go - or at least an uncomfortably high percentage of them. There were a few interesting wrinkles this time around - like me trying to pull guard. But the end game was as predictable as the sunrise: a submission defeat.
There is not a whole lot I can take from this specific go-round with Gracie Barra Seattle's own version of The Prodigy. To a degree, evaluating your performance after a match with Sauleh is a lot like evaluating your performance after a match with somebody like Rodrigo or Jesse or Casey. So I'm not going to waste my time on that. The things I woke up on Saturday morning neeing to work on are the same things I'll need to work on when I wake up Monday morning. No point in repeating them here.
The big regret of the day was not in getting in some training. I was far more interested in some Saturday training than I was in a 7-minute competitive match. But everything just seemed to dissolve right after Brock's match. Sauleh and Yuki got a second match in. But the remaining people were leaving in droves and packing up the tables almost immediately afterwards. So for my 3-4 hours at the academy on Saturday, I ended up spending about 3 minutes doing jiu jitu.
All that said, some good matches. Clay did very well. Connor arguably had one of the most exciting matches of the day, pulling off another win against a bigger guy. And Blake continues to show signs of being a real special jiu jitsu guy down the line. A lot of otherwise familiar faces weren't around in any way shape or form, which seems weird to people like me who have little life off the mat. But there was enough of a roomful for the Family atmosphere to be pretty intact, which is all you need at the end of the day. Cindy was incredible working with the kids. There is no way under the sun that I would be able to put up with what she puts up with.
When some white belts (including Anthony, who also was very impressive today) asked me earlier in the week about the event this weekend, I suggested to them to treat it like an assessment of where they are NOW and to use it as a tool to measure their progress over the next eight weeks/two months leading up to the Revolution. Typically, I'm finding my advice somewhat easier to suggest to others than to pursue for myself. That said, fortunately for me, there is both precious little mystery about my areas of weakness, and plenty of time to take care of them.
