The opportunity for a new tournament runner to enter the world of
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a great thing, because when it cost over $100 to
enter a tournament five months out, the market is not nearly as saturated
as it could be. Five Grappling put on a good tournament for its first
attempt in 2014, but the hiccups that came up this time are okay
considering the payoff for the whole year.
Five Grappling is built on the premise that they will take winners from
all around the world and set up a final tournament filled with the
winners. This is different than any other tournament runner where the
winners of any given tournament hold no bearing from the next time out.
The problem is with Five is not always the best person was winning due to
some inadequate reffing. It was hot or cold depending on who you got to
ref your match, and more often then most would like people were put to
sleep on the mats. Being that it is the first time out, most of this refs
should be weeded out the next time out.
Also, some people were rushed to the mats. Five had a great idea of
having people able to check in once they got there and weigh in, and it
let you know which mat your match would take place on. The problem came
in when their systems shut down and they eventually had to write it by
hand. In concept trying something new would work, but the technology was
the failure. One spot where they did fall short was the planning of
groups. They had every age, belt, and weight for the Gi tournament come
to weigh in at the same time, and that left huge lines and waits to get
on the scales. Combine that with the faulty tech it was not a fun time
standing in a line for a few hours. Not to harp on this being a first
tournament for them, but staggering the classes will easily clear this up
in the future.
Obviously, not everything they were trying was negative though. They do
not have weird weight classes like 207.5, and had normal weight classes
that jump twenty pounds or so. Plus, you had the ability to weigh in
without a Gi and a few hours before. That made shooting for a goal weight
easy when you could sit at 190 or 210. Another cool thing was not relying
on jut having your hooks in for back mount. You could actually use the
body triangle and still get your points. That is a good thing since using
your hooks is not always the best thing depending on a person¹s game.
Little tweaks to the rules like this make the tournament more dynamic
instead of relying on the classic rules. In the end, having other
tournament runners out there will force all tournaments to become better,
because just having the same two show runners out there can make things
stagnant.