My spectacular rainbow unicorn grappling match

I got a fight offer to grapple a “Danielle Kelly” in Submission Hunter Pro Oct 25th. Great! I get paid to do jiujitsu! Yes, absolutely.

I told Guns this, one of Syndicate’s assistant coaches who’s been helping me out lately. “I’ll look her up,” he said. The next day, he came in and said, “She’s really good at leg locks.” Oh boy, I thought, I’m NOT really good at leg locks. Actually, I hate leg locks and purposely have been putting off getting good at them because they are super dangerous and I don’t want to accidentally hurt my teammates practicing them. One wrong twist and somebody’s knee gets blown out.

Guns told me he was the best at leg-locks in the gym.

I stared at him. He wasn’t boasting. Just said it, matter-of-factly, and I 100% believed him. “Well, then, teach me the way!” I said, and promptly scheduled private lessons with him. Dude. Okay, so when somebody goes for a leg-lock on you, you have to either 1) peel the feet apart and off your hip 2) defeat their knee pinch 3) triangle your legs 4) roll out 5) grab their hands or neck 6) stand up and put weight on the foot, and sometimes you have to do several of them at the same time. There is always a right or wrong answer depending on how they grab and what part of you they grab and their body position. If you do the wrong thing, you are 95% dead and better tap out or you gamble your MMA career or walking ability.

Guns’s first leg lock defense lesson kinda blew my mind a little, but I kept at it and tried not to cry. lol

Then, I recalled my jiujitsu friend and former teammate Casey was also good at leg locks, so I scheduled weekly privates with him, TOO. In addition to leg-locks, Casey said things like, “She’s gonna invert, so to deal with that, you have to push her feet and dive north south head first into her stomach to keep her from sitting up.” Also, “If she sits up, you can push her over and try to knee cut to pass her guard. Guns said, “Let’s go over taking, maintaining, and choking from the back.”

Both of those guys sharpened my game overall tremendously. Despite finally getting caught with a toe-hold, I got out of numerous leg-lock attempts. In fact, she ONLY went for leg locks. If I hadn’t done those private lessons, she would have tapped me within the first minute. I felt I did great and was winning the match…until I wasn’t. haha She was really good, the best at my worst, and I knew it going in and I relished the challenge. I did everything they taught me! I did the north-south dive. I almost took her back the way Casey taught me. I did Casey’s single-leg-x escape. I did Gun’s peel the foot escape. I lost because I rolled when I should have figure-foured, and I wasn’t saavy enough to know a back-up 5% chance escape. Kudos to Danielle. She’s very skilled. I’m proud of my efforts, and it was really cool to headline an event that was broadcast on UFC Fight pass. In fact, an ad for the event was written across the UFC broadcast!

I am NOT excited to continue my journey into leg-locks, but most black belts go for leg-locks in competition. This was my first competition AS a black belt. It’s also hard to find training partners. I don’t want just anybody grabbing at my legs. I need someone to attack me but not break my stuff if they do it wrong. It’s it’s an advanced move. To my surprise, I found that JoJo, one of my main MMA training partners, is good at leg-locks, as well as Jordan The Monkey King, and my Dunham’s friend Charlie is stylistically sport-jiujitsu-y like her. Thanks especially to those three for the training. It hurt me not to have Dunham’s, though. There are a lot of big guys at Syndicate and I really didn’t have small technical people to roll with other than Jerry and those two I mentioned. Oh Valerie! Val was a life-saver! She probably challenges me the most jiujitsu-wise in the gym. I was also dealing with a lot of injuries. In fact, I’m glad that I was able to compete at all. I got through it was a great performance, and nothing really bothered me in the match. Phew. Man, just barely healed my stuff up in time. But I signed up for the fighterlife so no good complaining. Just gotta deal!

It’s so funny I was hoping to use this month after my MMA fight to heal up and I got like several injuries that I barely got through in training. ~_~; Again, fighter life.

My trip to Texas was fantastic! I was so excited to see Candy and Katie again, also my sponsor Bill and Mandy from My Consumer I.T. For those of you who pay attention, you will remember THEY SPONSOR THIS BLOG! Mwahaha thanks so much for that, and for treating me to dinner, cheering for me at the event, and being all around awesome people!

I wore my No Gi Bjj Gear Yoda rash guard and Meerkatsu tights. I have a discount code on http://nogibjjgear.com if you use “roxannemodafferi15”

I had to cut weight to make 130 pounds. She’s way smaller than me! I wore a crazy unicorn mane and wig because I’ve been smack talking her about unicorns. lol I looked ridiculous….but you expect that from me. Come on. 🙂 No WAY I can be normal.

When Katie ran over and put it on my head for our face off, she literally said, “Oh my god.” XD That reaction was priceless. lol

Yeah that was an awesome trip. Thank you, Eric and Mick, for this opportunity.

I’m super crushed that I lost, to be honest. I’m trying to be optimistic but it was rough. The whole thing felt like a fight camp, from researching my opponent, to doing specialized training, to the weight cut, to the post-weight in meals, to my friends being there, to warming up in the back, to the NERVES. The nerves were WAY more intense than a grappling tournament. And the depression afterwards was real, too. :/ Guns and Casey said they were proud of me, so that makes me feel nice. I tried really hard. But just because you do everything right doesn’t mean you’ll win. Someone else is fighting back. All that. I’m gonna continue running because I’ve certainly leveled up from this experience.

https://www.mcithouston.com/ for your server and network needs!

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