Yesterday was the Gracie Nationals grappling tournament held in the LA Fit Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The tournament was held under EBI rules (10-minutes submission only with the escape rules overtime) and I went to coach my friend Tameem Hamoui as usual.

Tameem's first match in the black belt division was not a lot of action. His opponent stayed on bottom the majority of the match and was not able to budge Tameem much out of his top position. Around 8 minutes in, Tameem's opponent started going for a rubber guard setup from full guard. Tameem kills the rubber guard with pressure for a minute white his opponent is still holding onto the mission control position. With a minute left, Tameem decides that he doesn't want to stall out the last minute in the position and attempts to pull his arm out and escape. This led to Tameem losing to a shoulder lock submission with under a minute left.

After that, we went to watch Baret Yoshida's match in the finals of his division. The finals had no time limit and the match went 21 minutes! Lots of back and forth sweeps and foot lock attempts until Baret finaly took the back, locked up a body triangle and submitted his opponent via RNC.

Tameem felt that he wasn't happy with his performance in his first match and decided to participate in the black belt absolute division. Unfortunately in his first match, he got caught in a heel hook after attempting his own heel hook on his opponent. The match was over in around a minute and that was the end of our tournament day. We stuck around to watch the end of the black belt absolute division (Tameem's opponent took 1st) and then we explored the LA Fit Expo afterwards.

Coming into 2018, Tameem was undefeated with me coaching him for 10 years! Starting in late 2007 all the way to our previous tournament in December 2017. The streak is not only dead, but with 2 subs in one day. But shit happens. It was a bad day and next tournament Tameem will be back on the winning track as usual.