A few years ago I was doing a ton of no gi Brazilian Jiujitsu and started to think I was getting pretty good at newaza. Which was true, I was getting pretty good. But the problem was I was getting good at no gi, and NOT gi.

I entered one of the big Judo comps in Australia and although I was a 60kg fighter I entered the -66kg weight division to get some harder match ups.
I won my first match with a kata guruma and then in the second round I came up against me good friend Ivo.

Ivo has really good transitions and he caught me in a belly down variation of the bow and arrow strangle. You see, because I had been doing so much no gi I had left my chin up and he just whipped the gi right underneath my chin.

I tried to squirm and wiggle and squirm and I was trying so hard to escape the choke that I forgot to tap, and I ended up passing out!!

While I was out I dreamt of working at a elementary school teaching maths. Then we I came back to the real world I had ivo above me smiling saying, “Matty why didn’t you tap?”

This taught me two things:
1 – Tap out! IT is super dangerous to pass out in training or competition. So always tap!!
2 – No gi grappling sometimes doesn’t help you in gi.

This is the strangle he got me with:

Here is a highlight reel of the strangle but the strangles start at the 1min 30 sec mark: