First Things First

In the lead up to this year’s ADCC World Championships we’re going to analyze the game’s of the athletes competing. If you want to read about ADCC’s newcomers so you can learn their skills, strengths, and understand the holes in their game, the ADCC Rookie Reports are for you.

ADCC Rookie Report

We’re back with another ADCC Rookie Report! In the lead up to the 2024 ADCC World Championships we’ll be analyzing the winning runs of athletes that have qualified for their first ADCC World Championship.

How do they win? What makes their game interesting and unique? What opportunities does that game present for their opponents? You can read previous rookie reports here:

• Jacob Couch

• Jozef Chen

• Michael Pixley

We’re constraining these rookie reports to only what the athletes showed in their trials winning performances. This time we’re looking at the Taylor Pearman’s devastating leg locks.

Taylor Pearman

Pearman hails from the the United Kingdom and won the -88KG division. I had never heard of him before he won ADCC trials, but that’s the magic of the event. A relatively unheralded grappler from Great Britain won an all-inclusive trip to the world’s biggest submission grappling spectacle. What’s not to love about that?

Just like fellow ADCC rookie Jacob Couch, Pearman ran the table at this event. He submitted everyone including IBJJF Pan American, European, and ADCC Trials winner Adam Wardziński. Perhaps more interesting the specificity of his techniques.

Pearman didn’t come out with a full arsenal of weaponry. He largely relied only on a single blade sharpened to perfection.

False Reaps and Russian Knots

Usually, we write these articles as an overview of an athlete’s broader game. We can’t do that here because Pearman’s game was so damn specific. Pearman just ended people from with the false reap.

The false reap is a niche position becoming more commonplace. It allows you to get to the powerful leg locking position cross ashi from outside in, instead of more common inside-out methods.

What’s most interesting to me is how Pearman used the false reap to end at classic positions like the Russian Leg Knot.

For what it’s worth, people will also call the ending position inside or diagonal ashi. The important thing to notice is Pearman’s feet are inside his opponent’s while their lower leg is outside of his torso.

1. Pearman’s leg is hooking his opponent’s secondary leg, stopping the stand-up

2. Pearman’s reap is creating a triangle, closing the loop around the primary leg

3. Pearman’s hand is ready to grab his opponent’s secondary leg should it present itself.

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