NAGA. The best way to get swords into the hands of highly physically achieving kids everywhere

This past weekend, the organization known as NAGA, was in town.  And by in town, I mean they were at Cabarrus arena...which is really far away.  Nonetheless, it was close enough for a day trip.  NAGA stands for the North American Grappling Association.  It is one of the big companies that hosts competitions for "grapplers"... aka wrestlers and jiu-jitsu players.  Being a jiu jitsu person myself, i decided to compete.  Contests are broken down by weight, age, experience level, and whether or not you're wearing a traditional uniform...also knows as a Gi.  Because of there being so many divisions...

There are many winners!  And many of these winners get swords!  And many of these winners are kids!  Which means at the end of the day, at any given NAGA event, there are lots of kids with swords running around.  Every kids dream.  Basically only a few steps away from being a full blown ninja!

Anyway...I decided about 3 weeks ago that I was indeed going to compete.  Its quite expensive, so once i paid, i started training a little harder and more consistently and started to work on my weight.  I wanted to compete in the under 140 lbs division.  If you know me, you know there isn't a lot of extra weight on me to begin with.  So, I had to figure out how to shed about 5 lbs.  This basically meant eating salads and protein only for about two weeks and then nothing on the day of weigh ins.  I made it though...weighed in at 138 the night before the contest.  Weighed about 143 on Saturday during the comp and then about 147 later that night.  Its all part of the mind game.  "Making weight" they call it.

On Saturday, after not sleeping well Friday night, and after dreaming i had missed the whole thing, I show up to the venue.  I run into a bunch of friends and other people and i sort of nervously pace around.  I had been hungry for about two weeks, but after eating Friday night, that quickly turned to being nervous about competing.  They call the first division and we turn in our cards to be put in brackets.  Then, they specifically call me.  Turns out there are no slim, inexperienced, oldish guys ready to compete in no-gi.  I was a winner by default, but i paid to compete, so they were going to put me in another division.  I had the choice to either go up a weight class or compete in regular Men's instead of Masters.  Being annoyed at the weight issues...i chose to compete against a couple guys who were probably fresh into college.  Which means i had "old man strength" against them...he hehe.  I ended up getting the takedown in my first match (but couldn't get out of the guys Guard).  So, I won 1-0.  Pretty lame.  For my second match, I got the takedown, passed Guard a few times, got caught in a reverse triangle (but wasn't close to being submitted) and won 6-4.  Also not too exciting...but a big W nonetheless.  There were only 3 of us, so i won the division. And my hands were exhausted.  But the pressure was off.  Nothing scarier than paying a bunch of money, only to lose and not get to compete again.

Flash forward a couple more hours.  Gi time!  Now, with the Gi, they had one other older guy for me to go against.  So, it was a division of 2.  One match only.  I would have been annoyed at this (high $/ match ratio), but I was so tired already that I was OK with just a single match.  Nonetheless, as soon as we started, I pulled Guard.  This means I grabbed his lapel, grabbed his sleeve, and put my legs around his torso.  From there I lowered my back to the mat, grabbed both ankles, and pushed forward with my hips causing him to fall down.  He came back up first, so i didn't get the sweep, but was able to wrap a leg, hold a sleeve, and get a pendulum sweep to mount.  From there, I tried a guillotine at one point but mostly just worked to north south and tried to stay out of guard.  I didn't get a submission, but it was much more interesting than the no-gi matches.

After the match, I shook the guys hand.  They announced I had won and Ryan Hoover had come in 2nd.  "Wait a second.  Are you THE Ryan Hoover?" I asked him.  "yeah."  At this point I got real excited.  He runs a gym in Gastonia and is an authority on self-defense.  I felt like I was meeting a celebrity.  I proceeded to smile real big and say how cool it was to meet him.

And then it was basically over for me.  I hung around awhile to help one of my coaches.  I filmed his matches for him and kept time.  I "coached" him by telling him he was doing well.  He won his two matches.  Then I walked to my car to go home.

My toes had been hurting a little, but on the way to the car i really noticed that things were getting worse.  they were swelling and turning purple.  I got two NAGA metals and two purple, swollen toes.  What a day.