It happened in 2013.
Some young, unknown black belt from Gracie Barra pulled one of the member of the illustrious Gracie clan in the San Diego Abu Dhabi Pro Trials. And not long after the start, the young slugger pulled guard, but the favored son was on him like lice, straight pressure passing out the gate.
Then something unexpected happened.
Somehow, the young slugger established a certain kind of grip in half guard, bridged and rotated belly down. It was almost like he was giving his back, but not quite…
1, 2, 3…
It was over!
But there was no tap.
No.
The favored son was out.
That was the match that put Magid Hage on the map. No one expected him to choke Clark Gracie out like that.
Not long ago, I watched that match again, and I noticed something that made an instant improvement to my understanding of baseball chokes (which are all just funky setups to the cross choke anyway).
First, a little background:
When I originally learned the baseball choke from half guard. The grips were far hand palm up and near hand palm down. The issue with that is the transition to the choke has a submission risk. If your opponent is faster than you, they can armbar the hell out of you and add one more poor limb to their arm collection (those bastards).
But I noticed that Magid’s grip was different.
His near hand was palm up and his far hand was palm down.
I tested it right away, and it was straight bananas. It made the choke so much more lethal and there was no armbar risk. Hell, the only problem was just setting up the grip.
That palm up grip on the near side was harder to set up but that just means that more exploration is called for.
And that’s what yours truly is all about.
And if you didn’t know (how could you not), the best place to start straight up stealing the fruits of my research is:
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