Justin Steele Snatches Incredible Victory at Bravado BJJ Open
Justin Steele
Armstrong Submissions / Gracie Barra Chatham fighter Justin Steele continued his impressive Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu development with an incredible last second victory in the finals of the Bravado BJJ Open held in Brampton on Saturday.
Due to the caliber and number of opponents in his range Steele ended up in a somewhat open division in this tournament. After dominating two competitors in the preliminaries, he faced a daunting task in the finals as his opponent outweighed him by a startling eighty pounds.
Steele may have made an error in strategy right off the start as he chose to pull guard and sweep his larger foe to no avail, and he ended up on the bottom with his opponent in side control. He got pinned there to go down 3-0 in the match.
The big man stayed in the side control position, but was unable to maneuver and score any more points on Steele. The fight pretty much stayed that way throughout and things looked grim for Steele as he struggled to bridge, separate and sweep the big man off him.
As the match wound down to the last 30 seconds Steele found some space and scrambled hard. In the ensuing scramble as his foe twisted and turned to get on top of him he found his opening, wrapped his leg around the neck and quickly sunk in the triangle choke. Sensing the danger, his opponent tried to flip out, but due to Steele’s superior skill he was able to lock it in more and secure the tap out with only five seconds to go in the match
(Please watch the video for the impressive performance and a post-fight word with Justin Steele)
I spoke to the impressive Steele afterwards to get his breakdown of the fight. “I thought I could pull guard and sweep him but he was way too big for that. He has like eighty pounds on me, so he ended up passing my guard.”
In a fine display of learning and understanding the game, Steele let us in on the thought process that is jiu-jitsu,
“I knew it was gonna be a hard time getting out of side control so I just thought about getting into guard the whole time. We ended up in a scramble and I was able to get the triangle so.”
It does not get any better in jiu-jitsu than a smaller fighter being patient and determined with a huge guy in control of you for the majority of your fight, only to persevere, find an opening and pull out a beautiful triangle victory in the end.
In the world of jiu-jitsu, the sky is the limit for Justin Steele.
Matt Todd Takes Impressive Silver in the Adult Medium Heavy Division
Later in the day in the Adult Medium Heavy Division of the Open, Armstrong Submissions / Gracie Barra Chatham fighter Matt Todd went an impressive 3-0 in the round robin with two submission wins and a 6-0 win on points to get to the finals in the men’s division.
Todd met his match in the final and was defeated by a cross choke submission to go 3-1 overall for the open.
It was a very impressive showing in Brampton for Todd and Steele, and shows real quality in the teaching at Armstrong Submissions / Gracie Barra Chatham.
Things won’t slow down for Gracie Barra because next weekend on September 18th, they are scheduled to host the next ICAD’s no-gi grappling tournament at the facility in Chatham.
Below is a video of Steele’s fight and a post fight interview:
Dwight Wakabayashi is a Featured Columnist at CKSN.ca (Also a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report MMA and a correspondent for MMACanada.net).
Catch him on Twitter @wakafightermma