50/50 Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Update from Spain: A wild turn of events ends with Ryan Hall taking the bronze medal at the Abu Dhabi Submission Wrestling World Championship!

Read on for more information…

Barcelona, Spain
9/27/09

After winning the ADCC West Coast qualifier in Carson, CA earlier this year, Ryan was invited to compete in the most prestigious no-gi grappling tournament in the world, the Abu Dhabi Submission Wrestling World Championship. With the participants representing a Who’s Who of the world’s greatest Jiu-Jitsu fighters, wrestlers, and MMA fighters, simply managing to qualify for the ADCC tournament is a huge feat in itself, and managing to take home a medal in one of the most difficult weight classes (<65.9 kg) is far rarer than that.

Here’s how it happened:

After defeating WEC contender and long-time BJJ black belt, Jeff Curran in the first round, and losing a hotly-contested match in overtime to 2-time champion Leo Vieira in the quarterfinal, Ryan was called back into the bracket to replace the man who defeated him the day before. Both Leo and 2007 defending champion, Rani Yahya, were injured in the semi-final, setting the stage for an all-American showdown in the 3rd place match between Ryan and Paragon Jiu-Jitsu’s Jeff Glover. It was a fast-paced and highly technical match with many fluid transitions and dangerous attacks from both competitors, but Ryan was able to recover from a takedown in the final minute to sweep and take Jeff’s back in the closing seconds, securing the bronze with a narrow victory over an extremely talented and dangerous adversary.

It has been a career-long dream of Ryan’s to compete and medal at Abu Dhabi, and he hopes to return with an even stronger performance next time.

<65.9 kg Results:
Champion: Rafael Mendes (Brazil)
Silver: Rubens Charles (Brazil)
Bronze: Ryan Hall (USA)
4th Place: Jeff Glover (USA)

Ryan v. Jeff Glover in the bronze medal match

Stay tuned for a full breakdown of the ADCC tournament and Ryan’s write-up of his experience there.

Tags: abu dhabi, adcc, barcelona, cobrinha, jeff curran, jeff glover, leo vieira, leozinho, rafael mendes, ryan hall, spain.
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 10:42 am and is filed under General. 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.