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The Finale Of Pro Grappling's Most Innovative Event
Analyzing PGF Season 6's Finale Tournament
William
April 30th, 2024
First Things First
Today we're discussing the final tournament from PGF Season 6. If you want to learn more about the hottest no-gi promotion and one of the brightest prospects in the sport, check this out.
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What's In Today's Letter?
Professional Grappling Federation
The Professional Grappling Federation, PGF, is the most innovative event in grappling full stop. Instead of simply hosting a new tournament with slightly modified rules, founder Brandon Mccaghren created a full interactive season of grappling.
The PGF brings athletes to Vegas for a week-long event. The grapplers are then bid on to be drafted into four separate teams. Those teams spend the next four days competing against one another for points. The team with the highest point total splits $100,000, and the eight individual athletes who have accrued the most points go on to a final tournament to compete for a $20,000 prize.
Scoring comes from submissions. If you submit your opponent with a choke, you get six points, joint locks get three points, and any submission secured in the first 60 seconds gets an additional point.
We’re going to take a look back at some of the best action from the regular season later. Today we’re analyzing the event’s final tournament.
When all was said and done, team X-Martial took the team prize. Their team was composed of Elijah Carlton, David Evers, Davis Asare, Nathan Haddad, Ben Eddy, Dane Leak, and Caleb Crump.
Three of X Martial's competitors qualified for the tournament, Asare, Carlton, and Eddy. Unfortunately, Eddy was injured and PJ Barch took his place. The rest of the competitors were Andy Varela, Daniel Sathler, Jett Thompson, and Renato Canuto. Let's look at how the event played out.
Final Tournament
The PGF Finale is a simple eight-man submission-only tournament with EBI overtime. One important and interesting rule change is how they punish stalling calls.
If an athlete is called for stalling, they're forced to go to turtle. Their opponent starts behind them, exactly like the referee's position in folkstyle wrestling.
Like many, I dislike how EBI has been gamed. If someone is having a hard time getting close to a submission, they simply stall for overtime and try to win there. I think this rule change is helpful because it could literally end the night for people called stalling.
Jett Thompson
The 17-year-old Thompson straight up stole the season for me. I had never heard of this kid before, but he made an immediate impact on me with his quick leg locks in the regular season. The finals tournament was no different.
Thompson’s first match was against Daniel Sathler. Satlher received a stalling call early on so Thompson restarted in an advantageous position.
Thompson quickly worked to throw his hooks in after the restart. Sathler tried to fight the hooks with his hands, but Thompson trapped the hand and started smothering Sathler to open up the rear naked choke finish. Check it out.
Jett Thompson vs Daniel Sathler  | They start and Thompson raises his hips to throw his hooks in. Watch Thompson’s right hand. He covers Sathler’s mouth and Sathler whips his neck around to get some oxygen. Thompson uses the space and the distraction to slip his choking arm in. |
Next, Thompson took on PGF veteran and leg locker Elijah Carlton. Thompson got it done in less than a minute. Watch how Thompson uses inside position here to control Carlton's primary leg without closing his legs for the Aoki lock.
Jett Thompson vs Elijah Carlton  | Thompson is playing reverse de la Riva. Carlton throws Thompson’s legs by and falls onto a leg attack. They trade grips and leg pummeling. Thompson gets both legs inside and frees his knee line. Thompson makes an X on Carlton’s primary leg, allowing him to extend it and finish the Aoki lock. |
The other end of the finals was taken by one of the season's favorites, Andy Varela.
Andy Varela
Varela is an all-action ADCC World Championships veteran. Generally, he's made a name for himself using chokes and acrobatic attacks.
Andy Varela vs Kevin Beuhring  | Varela is sprawling on Beuhring’s turtle with an open seat belt. He launches over Beuhring’s back to spin him, put his hooks in and lock his hands. Varela punches an arm across and grabs Beuhring’s shoulder to hold the position. Then he locks his hands to get the rear naked choke. |
Next Varela was matched up against fellow season 6 favorite PJ Barch. Varela spent most of the tense match trying to pass Barch's guard. With no submission in regulation, they went to overtime.
Varela won the match by submitting Barch in overtime. Barch got his shoulders to the mat and nearly started to escape, but Varela dug under his neck to set the face crank.
Andy Varela vs PJ Barch  | Watch Varela’s left arm. As Barch goes to escape he posts on the elbow so he has room to punch it through. When Barch starts sliding his shoulders out, Varela shoots the arm across Barch’s neck to set the rear naked choke. Varela locks his hands to finish with a face crank. |
Finals
The finals between Varela and Thompson were just as tense as Varela's match with Barch. Much of the match had Thompson trying to dig scoop grips and leg entanglements from under Varela. Varela was content to hold Thompson down and not advance position. Varela received two stalling penalties in the match due to the lack of action.
Three stalling calls would have disqualified Varela, so he took it upon himself to up the pace. Soon after the match restarted he ended up passing Thompson's guard with about thirty seconds left.
Andy Varela vs Jett Thompson  | Varela is moving side to side to get past Thompson’s legs and frames. Varela holds Thompson’s low leg out of the way, puts his head on the high hip, and grabs Thompson’s high shoulder to get past the guard. That momentary control of opposite hip and shoulder allowed Varela to secure the pass. |
Varela couldn’t do anything with the position in short time so they went to overtime. There, Varela scored another face crank and took home twenty thousand dollars for winning the title.
Andy Varela vs Jett Thompson  | Thompson strips Varela’s initial face crank attempt. Varela sets it up again by grabbing Thompson’s shoulder. After Varela has the grip, he uses his free hand to push on Thompson’s armpit and move him the other direction. That drops Thompson into Varela’s arm tighter so he can squeeze for the finish. |
The final was tense and the season over-delivered. Could this be the future of no-gi grappling?
The Future Of Grappling Competition?
Before this season I was hardly aware of The PGF. Today I am a big fan.
I interviewed founder Brandon Mccaghren before the event and he had an interesting take on the competitive jiu-jitsu scene. Essentially he said that everyone is doing the same tournament model and we’ve seen how far that can go. No one is trying anything new, and he isn’t sure why. I am more or less aligned with him on that front.
Changing the rules isn’t going to meaningfully impact viewership of combat sports in the United States. Wrestling and judo have been experimenting for decades, and both are still largely fringe sports. If you want a new audience, you need to give people a new reason to pay attention, and reason to stay engaged. That’s exactly what the PGF is doing.
Outside of having tons of content like pre-shows, post shows, and documentaries, they have a fantasy league so people have a reason to follow along. They even gave out $1000 cash and $1000 in gear as prizes.
I don’t know if this version of professional grappling will be the biggest even in jiujitsu going forward. I do know that if you always try the same thing you’ll always get the same results, and the PGF is the only organization that is trying something fundamentally different.
The PGF has the financial support to keep experimenting, and I’m happy to support people that are paying athletes while delivering high quality matches to more people.
Do you think the PGF is the future of professional grappling?
Further Viewing & Stories You Might Have Missed
All of the PGF’s regular season matches are available for free here. Open up the sidebar and check them out!
You can also watch their post even show here.
You can also read my interview of Brandon Mccaghren here.
Three Stories You Might Have Missed
Mikey Musumeci is taking on Kade Ruotolo At ONE 168: Denver. This is inarguably the best grappling match that ONE Championship has ever set up.
Good news, the UFC is returning to Manchester! Bad news for the locals, the main card starts at 3 AM.
Conor McGregor famously fought with the UFC over his desire to become an equity partner in the organization. Now he is part owner of BKFC. Between Ngannou getting a piece of PFL MENA and this, I wonder if more promotions will start using equity to give key athletes more money.
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