While the Europeans took center stage over the last week, Kade Ruotolo had an outstanding performance on Saturday night against the current IBJJF Middleweight Black Belt No-Gi World Champion, Tommy Langaker.
Kade dominated the fight and displayed an incredible arsenal of submissions.
He started the fight imposing strong hand fighting for a couple of minutes. Right after, Ruotolo surprised his opponent with a flying armbar, followed by a flying inside heel hook – it was crazy!
Tommy defended the attacks trying to apply pressure on top of Kade, but Kade recovered the guard with a Guillotine attempt, then swept his opponent using his shin, forcing Tommy to play guard.
A few seconds later, Kade applied the “tumbleweed” back take to crucifix – by this point, Kade was on fire 🔥 – Tommy ended up escaping while Kade was trying to attack the Kimura trap armlock. As soon as he escaped, another headlock was waiting for Tommy… Kade started applying pressure from half guard while his opponent tried to survive.
Langaker tried to set up the Coyote Guard but Kade applied a beautiful D’arce choke. The choke was deep. Tommy tried to escape by setting up the coyote guard and Kade countered again with another D’arce choke attempt.
The competitors put some distance between themselves, and Kade started to use the ghosting pass (passing from far without letting the opponent touch you.) He mixed ghosting with pressure passing, such as body lock attempts. Suddenly Kade hit a DEEEEP D’arce choke. I don’t even know how Tommy didn’t tap for that one. That was so deep – man, Tommy’s tough.
While Kade was squeezing that choke for at least a minute, he made one more transition to crucifix from the D’arce 🤯 it got slippery and Kade ended up on bottom attacking a leg entanglement… And then somehow he hit an armbar 🤯😳 Tommy survived and escaped from it… During the scramble, my student put himself into a nice position from top side control.
We trained a lot of body locks and pressure passes for this fight. And I saw Kade was doing it all. They say “you are what you eat…” In Jiu-Jitsu I say: “you are what you drill!” This is why Kade always looks super sharp 🔪
After spending a few seconds applying pressure, Kade went back again to the ghosting pass, mixing it up with some pressure passing.
Tommy tried to entangle Kades Leg, but Kade is super comfortable in that situation – we always practice it in training. Kade didn’t stop moving while Tommy was trying to control him from bottom.
In a smooth transition to bottom, Kade started attacking Tommy’s legs.
Kade applied the 50/50. As Tommy tried to escape, Kade set up another triangle from nowhere 🤯 followed by the Cabana or Tent strangle.
Kade couldn’t finish it…he was going back and forth between the triangle and cabana… He saw that the fight was over, then he let it go and closed the guard – right after that, the bell rang 😮💨
What an incredible performance!
Happy Monday!
Andre
Andre Galvao
Atos Jiu-Jitsu Head Coach
Jiu-Jitsu Hall Of Fame Member
