50/50 Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Ryan Hall and Anthony Cincotta competed in the professional divisions at the Grapplers Quest World Series of Grappling in Las Vegas, NV this past weekend. Read on for results…

Anthony Cincotta competed in his first Grapplers Quest professional tournament after consistently winning the top amateur brackets at all the major tournaments on the East Coast. In the first round of the 150-170 lbs division he faced off against the eventual champion, highly-accomplished black belt Marcelo “Lapela” Mafra of CheckMat. Anthony hung tough for a while, but Lapela’s experience was the deciding factor and he was able to secure the victory via a choke from the back. A rough outing, but a very valuable learning experience for Anthony, who received his blue belt in April of this year.

Ryan Hall fought through the toughest bracket of the tournament and ended up with 3rd place after facing off against 3 highly-accomplished black belt opponents. After receiving a first round bye, Ryan defeated Wesley Gann (Nova Uniao) with a mounted brabo choke to advance to the semi-final. There he had a back-and-forth battle with Wilson Reis (BJJ United). Both fighters scored with sweeps and nearly had the other’s back, but tied at 4 apiece with less than 10 seconds left, Wilson was able to pick up the deciding points in one of the best matches of the day.

In the bronze medal match, Ryan showed off his still-under-construction wrestling game as he was able to take down the reigning black belt No-Gi Pan American Champion, Rodrigo Ranieri (CheckMat), with a double leg before locking in the 50/50 position and finishing with his signature heel hook in the closing moments of the match.

3rd Place ain’t 1st, but a solid performance nonetheless, closing out a successful year of competition for the Fifty/50 team. Look for a series of faces new and familiar to make a serious impact on the International scene in 2010.

Pictures to follow.

Tags: anthony cincotta, grapplers quest, lapela, las vegas, marcelo mafra, professional, rodrigo ranieri, ryan hall, wesley gann, wilson reis.
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Competition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.