Scotland’s first Submission Only show in the style of EBI and Polaris takes place this Saturday at the Community Central Hall, Maryhill, Glasgow.
The Scottish Grappling Invitational is the brainchild of Garry Christie and James McIntyre, the events directors of Scotland’s premier grappling events company Scottish Grappling.
Their first event, the original Glasgow Open took place in 2008 and the events have grown in popularity ever since.
We caught up with James, who is also the area officer and a member of the board of directors for the UKBJJA, Brazilian JiuJitsu’s governing body in the UK, earlier “We’ve ran submission only divisions at our main competitions before at our main tournaments and they proved very popular. However, as the tournaments grew in terms of competitor numbers we couldn’t fit them in during the day. Garry came up with the idea of trying our own Polaris style show and we took it from there. We’ve tried to have a good mix of the best talent from all the Scottish gyms as well as attempting to showcase female athletes in line with the UKBJJA’s Unstoppable Girl scheme. Unfortunately, we lost one of our main female matches due to work commitments, but we still have an excellent match between Michaela Steele and Erin Wilson. Both ladies compete everywhere they get the chance to and just go for it. There’s no quit in either of them.”
“We have a few Scotland-England clashes on the card. We’ve brought 3 guys up from NEJJ in Durham who despite being a small team compared to some, routinely smash it at national and international competitons. Jordan Cooper for instance who takes on Jamie Gaffney is a former British champion and is always an exciting athlete to watch. We also have Cameron Nicol from the Griphouse taking on Luke Begley from 12 Gauge MMA in another Scotland vs England clash. Cameron has been on a tear of the Scottish grappling scene recently, scoring numerous gold medals at events and winning the prize pot at the last two Forza tournaments. Luke is a new challenge for Cameron, coming in with a 2-2 MMA record so it will be interesting to see what he brings to the table against Cameron’s dominant wrestling based game.”
“The main event also promises to be a cracker as pro MMA fighter Dan Hope from the Griphouse takes on Steven Playfair from Rick Young’s Black Belt Academy. Both athletes are extremely tough and although Dan doesn’t have the same depth of grappling tournaments on his resume that Steven does it’s a match that could go either way and should prove an excellent way to end the night”.
MMA UK will be at the show, full fight card will be on the site with live updates of results as they happen.
Tickets are on sale until Friday priced at £25 from www.scottishgrappling.com
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