EBI 5 went down on Sunday evening and it was a submission filled event. The winner of the 16-man welterweight tournament, Garry Tonon took home $20,000 and the championship belt.
After heel hooking EBI 5, Garry Tonon takes to Facebook
Despite locking up two of his four opponents with nasty heel hooks, “The Lion Killer” took to Facebook just one day later to discuss the move that is taking over mainstream combat sports.
“Dear jiu jitsu community,
It has come to my attention that heelhooks are being used more and more in mainstream competition in both MMA and BJJ. I am excited for this but it comes with a responsibility. You absolutely must educate your students, or bring someone in who can, on how to intelligently apply and defend these submission holds, and all submission holds. How can you as a coach, in good conscience, allow a student of yours to compete were a submission hold is not only legal, but common, and not educate them about it. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. There are a lot of serious injuries happening in gyms and competitions every year. 99% of them are preventable and or able to be made less serious by proper education. Your students need to understand that this submission hold is powerful and can do great damage if it is not respected. I am not sorry that people get injured in these moves. We operate in a COMBAT SPORT! When intelligent defence is not applied, and a person does not tap, limbs break and people go unconscious. This is real stuff we’re dealing with. Tell your students that! Make it clear, if you are not responsible and educated you will get unnecessarily hurt or unnecessarily hurt others. As well as education about the actual techniques it is your job as an instructor to rid your school of ego. If you teach your students to consider taking pops in moves just to not tap in the gym just to not get submitted by someone injuries will happen. If you let your students apply moves aggressively and recklessly in spite of people, injuries will happen. Ok rant over. There’s probably some stuff I missed but please consider my message.”
In a super fight between Riley Breedlove and Sophie Lee, the heel hook was used by Breedlove to finish the fight, however an injury looked to occur during the submission. Like Tonon said the students must be educated not only on how to apply the nasty heel hook, but also how to defend it.
Injuries can happen no matter what the sport, but it is much less likely if you are able to keep things in control.
Congratulations to Garry Tonon on his third EBI championship.
On Saturday December 19, Tonon will be in Coquitlam, B.C. doing a seminar at Titan MMA from
