My lower back hurts. My right collar bone and shoulder hurt. Now that I think about it, my upper back and neck hurt too. At least the pizza from Pizza Boli was good. It damn better have, for how long we spent driving around looking for the place and how it burned the roof of my mouth. I don’t know what was wrong with my idea of stopping at some random fast food joint and getting the hell out of here. If it sounds like I’m pissy, I am. It was a shitty day.
God dammit, I’m cold now. Not like “brrr” cold, but cold as in all the benefits of being warmed up- elevated heart rate, loose and relaxed muscles, and metabolizing a constant source of energy rather than blood sugar- are gone. Instead, I’m stiff and nervous. Wonderful combination.
They just called my name. I’m “in the hole” on mat two. Two more matches and I’m up. I take my scorecard over to the mat table. “Am I white or blue?” The guy running the table looks up, “uh… just stay white,” he replies, sounding annoyed.
I start twisting my torso back and forth and doing arm circles in a fruitless attempt to get my blood pumping again. The two matches ahead of me finish far too quickly, both by ippon. I take a final deep breath and bow before stepping nervously onto the mat. The mat is really soft, but it’s so ghetto. It’s made up of two inch think, two feet by six feet pieces of Styrofoam. The match areas are large, single pieces of beige canvas duct taped to the styrofoam.
I’m standing at the edge of the canvas, waiting for my opponent. I tap the mat twice with my toes as I shift my weight back and forth. Lean to the left. Tap tap. Lean to the right. Tap tap. It used to be a sign of confidence for me, like a bull pawing at the dirt as he gets ready to charge. Now it’s just a nervous habit.
My opponent finally comes jogging up t his side of the mat. He’s got short blond hair and a goatee. He looks like a frat boy. A bigger than me, stronger than me, frat boy.
We bow to each other, as per etiquette. “Hajime!” snaps the head referee. We move towards each other, looking for grips and slapping each other’s hands away. My hand darts in and gets a solid grip on his lapel. I get stuffed as I step in for ippon-seoi-naga, or a shoulder throw. I manage to step out of his counter, but I fall to me knees. His body weight comes crashing down on my shoulders as he sprawls when I reach for a leg. I drive forward and duck under his arm. He falls to his stomach, puts his hands on his ears and sucks his elbows in underneath his body. I take his back. This is where I want to be.
That’s the first rule of fighting- take the fight to where you have the biggest advantage. For me, against just about anybody in the tournament, that’s probably on the ground. The only problem with that is there’s a heavy bias against groundwork in judo. I have to be clearly advancing my position or the referee will stand us back up. It’s difficult to do that if my opponent just turtles up every time we go to the floor. Even my takedowns aren’t well suited for judo. They are more about dragging the opponent to the floor than planting them firmly on their back. My wrestling and juijitsu are heads and shoulders above my judo, but with this being a judo tournament, that fact is mostly irrelevant.
As if to prove this point, the referee stands us up and we start over. Almost immediately, I shoot in deep for a double leg. It’s a beautiful, textbook example. It’d be two points in a wrestling match and as many as six in a submission grappling match. What’s it good for here? Not a damn thing. I sink my hooks in and start working a choke. His chin is tucked too close to his chest; I’m not going to be able to get it. I manage to snake my arms around his and go for a kimura. He sucks his arm back underneath him. I slide further up his shoulder, leaving myself open for a reversal, hoping that he’ll do something and maybe I can find an opening. He doesn’t and I don’t. We get stood up again.
This time, I drag him forward and down and get a front headlock in. I scoop in an arm, lock in an anaconda choke, and roll him over. I know it’s tight because I can hear his coach screaming to get out of it. It apparently wasn’t in deep enough. After a few second of him not tapping, the ref stops us.
Judo, and the grappling arts in general are a lot like physics. To advance to a more dominant position takes a lot more energy than maintaining it. Standing position is like sitting in an idle car. Taking the opponent down and achieving dominant position is like accelerating to sixty. Once I’m there, I can just
I’m sucking in air like I can’t get enough of it. Me knees are weak and shaking. My arms are heavy and hard to move. I’m moving slow and stuff instead of quick and fluid. I can’t react fast enough, or hardly at all really, when he steps in for O-goshi. All I can do is twist my body enough so that he doesn’t score ippon. It isn’t enough to stop him from rolling me on my back anyways and pinning me with kesa-gatame. There’s only 17 left, but there’s no saved by the bell rule in judo. I try and roll him, but he just shoots his legs out and I can’t deal with leverage like that. After 25 seconds, he gets ippon. It’s irrelevant, he would have won on points anyways if I had gotten out.
Now I’m feeling light headed. There are spots flashing in front of my eyes. My throat is thick with mucous and saliva. I feel like I have to vomit. My lungs are burning. I’m having a hard time feeling my right arm. I hope it’s just exhaustion and not an aggravation of a previous injury. I need water, badly. All the water fountains have been turned off, and I have no cash for the concession stand.
I sit against the painted cinder block wall as I wait for these feelings to pass. I stand up and join the rest of the team after about fifteen minutes. We spend the time between our matches watching the other ones. There are a lot of solid throws, all of which we cheer. I notice a lot of players just balling up on the ground and others getting a little frustrated like I was, so I smile with glee every time I see someone win by choke or submission.
My name is called again. I’m three deep in the hole this time. Four other matches should be plenty of time to get warmed up a little. Once again, my opponent is bigger and heavier than I am. At least he’s my height this time instead of two or three inches taller.
This match gets right down to business. My opponent is standing across the mat. No waiting this time.
I secure the first takedown. It was a modified double leg that put him firmly on his back. I’m surprised it wasn’t ippon. I’m fighting for side control so I can get a pin. I have kate-garume for about ten seconds before he wraps my leg into half guard. This guy has no problem fighting from his back. Under any other set of rules, this would be fun; a real give and take ground battle, I think. Instead, we are stood up.
He doesn’t really get the next takedown, but he does end up in control at the end of it. I have him securely in my closed guard. I’m worried about opening up because of his strength. He could pass my guard easily. I’m about to throw my legs up and try for a triangle, from which I could work a choke, an arm lock, or a sweep, but the referee calls a stop.
The next go-round, I get sloppy. He steps in for an uchi-mata, a sort of hip throw. A lot of times in practice I’ll give up throws because I’m more comfortable off my back that I am on my feet. I did the same thing here and he lands a solid throw, putting me squarely on my back. Ippon is called. I congratulate him on his throw, shake his hand, and walk off the mat.
I should probably try and drop down to the next lowest weight division. Being in the bottom half of my current one isn’t working very well. I should also work on my conditioning, too. Getting gassed, even with everything I was doing, shouldn’t be happening in a four minute round. I should really work on my throws. If I’m going to be competing, I might as well work towards competing well under the given rules. Of course, maybe I should really just find events that have rules more suited to my style.
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