Good pics of Parker going for the armlock taken by my friend Kenny from AliciaPhotos.com.

Sunday at the Mundial was a long day. Rudy and I got there at 10 AM as the first quarterfinal black belt matches were starting. Felipe Costa won his first match, but lost his second. Check out the semi-live play by play I did on U.S. Grappling's Twitter page.

The black belt finals were almost all disappointing, with notable exceptions:

• Roger Gracie, who finished his opponent with a choke from the mount, just as he had done for his other 8 opponents
• Braulio Estima, who finished his opponent with a triangle
• Lana Stefanac, who became the first Mundial double gold medalist at black belt
• Valerie Worthington, who's a good friend of mine and who faced a very tough Penny Thomas in the finals, ultimately losing to Penny via choke in a very competitive match
  

Other than that, it was way too much strategy and not enough jiu jitsu. Boo.
Still, these guys are phenomenal at what they do, and I learned a lot just by watching.

Sunday night, Johnny Ramirez invited me to New Breed to train. I accepted, and we got to roll. Johnny remains incredible at jiu jitsu, and our training was a blast, as always. I also had the opportunity to train with Kurt, a tall, big purple belt from Oregon Johnny kept calling "Skeletor." Kurt was a lot of fun to roll with because he was able to shut down most of what I tried to do, being really tall and good at jiu jitsu and what not.