"Alright, everybody on the wall..." This was our instructor Jake's signal for us to line up so that he could match us all up for rolling sessions. First up for me was House, one of the guys who was actually on Bangkok Boxing's fight team. House just happened to be his last name, but darn if it didn't describe him perfectly. Dude was huge, and mostly if not all muscle. It was about to be a big house vs a one-bedroom apartment. However, I thought to myself, "I've rolled with guys much bigger than me before. I'm down for the challenge. Besides, BJJ is designed so that the smaller guy has a decent chance, right? Let's do this."
Things didn't start out so bad. The first melee of trying to take each other down had us rolling halfway across the mat, almost rolling over others in the process. For me having a significant size disadvantage, I did a decent job of keeping him from keeping a dominant position on me at first, but of course, that didn't last long. I don't remember him keeping me in full mount for too long, but whether it was full mount, side control, half guard... heck, it really didn't matter. I could not breathe.
Normally, when I'm on the bottom, even when I'm rolling with a guy bigger than me (I'm 165 lbs on a good day, so it's not like that doesn't happen often), I'm normally able to stay calm and bide my time until I can improve my position or sweep him altogether. Not this time. When House was in top position, he used every ounce of his weight to put as much pressure on me as possible. I'd never seen him fight, but I could tell that he definitely isn't one of those "lay and pray" fighters when it comes to grappling. I spent every moment on the bottom just trying to give myself space to get air in and out of my lungs. I survived as long as I could, but to my embarrassment, I ended up tapping from pure suffocation. To my dismay, Jake yelled "TIME" not even 10 seconds after I tapped. I guess that's the downfall of not being able to look at the clock during a round.
Looking for some kind of way to feel better about what just happened, I asked House how much he weighed. "About 230 lbs" he replied. He had about 70 pounds on me. I didn't feel so bad after hearing that, as I realized I was a Lightweight/Welterweight tweener who had just finished grappling with a Heavyweight. Still, it irked me that I tapped from not even being in a legit submission move with only seconds left to go in the round. As I chatted with House between rounds, he explained to me a concept that I already knew, but being on the business end of it drove the point home for me. When you're in top position, your goal is to make your opponent as uncomfortable as possible. It's probably going to be a bit harder for me to do than it was for him, since I'm not working with nearly as much weight, but if MMA fighters who are lighter than me can do it, surely I can learn to do it.
Despite the demoralizing experience, I'm ready to go right back at it on Monday. Eager to put that behind me and make sure that I'm on the other end of the suffocation next time.
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