AX Fight Night 5

The big center stage, the bright lights reflecting off of the white mats on the floor, walkout music blaring over the speakers right before the announcer bellows "And NOW! Fighting out of the red corner. Representing Wakizashi BJJ... Stevennnn McMahonnn!!!" As my team as the audience exploded into cheering. Last Saturday's competition was an unreal experience.

I've gotten to step into a cage once before during the All Armed Forces Combatives tournament at Fort Bragg for an MMA match against SSG Brown. I tell you guys what, getting to walk onto a stage like that is an exhilarating, terrifying, and just absolutely totally awesome experience.

Preparation
For the past few months, the whole team has come together to push the five competitors that would be representing Wakizashi BJJ at the AX Fighting event. Three of our blue belts had super fights and Terran and I were competing in the 8-man main event bracket. The team put in tons of no-gi sparring, shark-tanks, conditioning, and EBI over-time positional sparring. This has been the best competition preparation that I've ever been a part of, and I believe that the results are a testament to that work.

Fight Night
Not only did the whole team pour their hearts out during training to prepare us, but they took the time to make the 90-minute drive down to show up in numbers to support us the night of the event.

I can tell you guys that walking out and hearing the team cheering from upstairs made me bust out in the biggest smile. I know that myself and all the other competitors from the team are incredibly grateful for their support.


The Matches
Watching your teammates compete is ridiculously more nerve-racking than competing yourself. The really cool thing about watching them is that you know their game, what their favorite setups are, and what they are good at escaping. I've put in hours worth of rolling with the competitors tonight and those things were definitely apparent during their matches.

Ariana kicked off the night for Wakizashi with the first match for the team. Well known for her crucifix attacks, she executed her game beautifully during her match. She landed two take-downs, the second one entering into a modified crucifix and then transitioning to an arm-bar to secure the win within the first few minutes of the match.


Miles followed next. I consider Miles to be a take-down artist, and during sparring, he's given me plenty of frequent flyer miles when we start from standing. This match-up was phenomenal and I consider it to be the best one of the night. With repetitive massive take-downs and nail-biting escapes, Miles demonstrated multiple times the techniques that we have been working on. The match went into over-time and Miles secured the win with a rapid escape followed by a RNC from the back.


Jules also had a phenomenal match to watch. With back and forth attacks and escapes with his opponent, the crowd was going wild as these two grapplers battled back and forth across the cage. This match also went into overtime and Jules followed suit with Miles securing the win with a quick escape followed by a RNC from the back.


The 8-Man Bracket
Throughout my JiuJitsu career, I've made it a point to avoid having to compete against my teammates, either cutting weight or moving up a bracket to do so. This is the first time that I've ever entered into the same bracket as a teammate, and I did so under the impression that we would be starting on opposite ends of the bracket. The ideal situation is that we battle it out for the belt. The bracket was determined by names pulled from a hat, and luck decided that Terran and I would have to face each other in the first round.

I consider Terran to be a great friend on the team and someone that is constantly challenging me to be better. We've been battling it out on the mats since my very first day at Wakizashi, and now we would have to showcase that on the main stage for everyone to see.

The bell rang and Terran and I went to war. I have to tell you guys that multiple times in our match I utilized techniques that Terran has taught me to stay alive. One particular instance was when Terran had me in deep water while threatening a knee-bar. I used a defense that Terran had just taught me a couple of weeks ago, and was able to escape. Something that I assuredly wouldn't have been able to do had he not just taught me it.

We both poured our hearts out and gave it everything that we had to get the submission. We ended up going into triple over-time and Terran secured the win with two minutes of control time higher than my own. I was incredibly happy with the result and was genuinely happy that Terran would continue on to represent the team.


The Results                                                             
At the end of the night, Wakizashi won all three of the super fights and walked away with a lot of hardware. I'm incredibly proud of these competitors and the results that they earned through hours of hard work and dedication. I have been blessed to get to be a part of this team and continue to see leaps in progress in myself and those around me.

I also want to give a big thank you to Mr. Wiseman and Team Wise MMA for hosting such a great event! Events like this are tremendous for the development of local JiuJitsu and everyone involved improves as a result. Putting something like this together takes tremendous effort and I want to share an extreme gratitude for the work that was put in to make this happen.

As always, thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope to see ya'll on the mats soon!

About the Author:

Steven McMahon earned his Kyuki-Do Black Belt in 2011 from Grand Master Kim at Kim's Black Belt Academy and his  BJJ Purple Belt in January 2017 under Professor Charles Nunley. He trains out of Cornerstone BJJ in Fayetteville, NC. He is an active competitor at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Army Combatives tournaments.