Jiu-jitsu card a hit with fighters

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This article was published 03/04/2023 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Aidan St. Laurent attacked and attacked his opponent at Wamma Brandon’s inaugural Brandon Bouts jiu-jitsu card on Saturday night and eventually emerged victorious in overtime.

But the biggest winner may have been the card itself, which was held at the Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium.

“It was awesome,” St. Laurent said. “It was a great night and it’s super exciting. Hopefully we get to do it again soon, maybe a couple of times a year. Judging by what we saw tonight, maybe we’ll see a lot more of these.”

The 24-year-old member of the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry lives in Shilo, where he, Joe O’Donnell and Kevin Camara formed Shilo BJJ, a new jiu-jitsu gym that is free for military members. He also trains at Wamma Brandon.

A product of Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, St. Laurent began training a decade ago.

“Honestly, it’s the discipline that keeps me in the sport,” St. Laurent said. “My late father got me into it and I keep at it because of him.”

On Saturday evening in a battle of 170-pound purple belts, he met Allan McDonald, who trains out of Dave’s Gym in Winnipeg. It was St. Laurent’s first submission-only super fight in a big event, although he has competed in tournaments.

“As soon as he gripped me, I felt how strong he was,” St. Laurent said. “As the match went on, I come from a wrestling background so I was able to get him on the mat and keep him on the bottom. He was tricky. He worked on a kimura — (an armbar submission applied by the fighter on the bottom) — and he was game. He had very good defence.”

McDonald was able to fend off all St. Laurent’s submission attempts in the eight-minute fight, sending the match to overtime.

In the jiu-jitsu equivalent of a hockey shootout, both fighters sit down, with the fighter in the back wrapping his legs and arms around the fighter in the front. The goal is for the fighter in the front to escape the other fighter’s grasp as quickly as possible and then hold onto them longer when it’s their turn.

In this case, St. Laurent was the only fighter of the night who managed to get an overtime submission from the back, and then he was able to wriggle out of McDonald’s grasp for the win.

While many fighters simply held on tight, St. Laurent was actively looking for ways to get the tap.

“He went for the escape right away, right off the bat, and almost got out, to be honest,” St. Laurent said. “I got a little nervous there. I was able to get my seatbelt grip and secure the rear-naked choke. At that point I had a confidence boost because I knew that as long as I didn’t get finished by him, I’ll win the match.

“Fortunately I managed to escape. That’s how you to win. You don’t want to get subbed less quickly.”

With a loud cheering section from Shilo, it was a nice win for St. Laurent. Still, there was even more riding on the outcome than anyone realized.

“I had a bet with one of my buddies that if I won, he had to buy the T-shirt with my face on it and wear it,” St. Laurent said. “I’m looking forward to seeing that for sure.”

It was a very different outing for Sahba Zehtab-Jadid, although he also emerged with an overtime victory. In a 180-pound bout against fellow blue belt Ryan Rajczakowski of Winnipeg, Zehtab-Jadid found himself on the bottom defending against repeated attacks.

“The whole six minutes,” Zehtab-Jadid said with a laugh. “The whole first year of training was basically devoted to defence. ‘OK, if you’re in a bad situation, how do you just survive?’ That came into play here today because that’s what I did for six minutes basically continuously.

“Hats off to Ryan, he had me in some bad positions basically the whole time and there were a few that were very close to getting the job done. Thankfully I held out.”

Rajczakowski had back control for much of the time, but Zehtab-Jadid was confident he could weather the storm. He said his opponent was working very hard, so he relaxed a bit hoping to save some energy for overtime.

It paid off when he was quicker to escape and won the match.

“You have to muster everything you’ve got because you have to be explosive and get out of there as fast as you can and not get caught in the transition,” Zehtab-Jadid said. “That’s really what we’ve drilled for the last two weeks straight is ‘OK, there’s 15 on the clock, you have to survive or you have to get out. It worked out well.”

After Zehtab-Jadid went back to sit in the crowd to watch the other fights, he was joined by his wife and eventually their children too to offer him congratulations. He noted he could also hear his father’s voice in the crowd urging him on.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever won anything,” Zehtab-Jadid said. “It was pretty fantastic. It’s literally the first actual thing I’ve ever won and it felt great.”

The 38-year-old denturist was in his first match on a public card, and admitted that it was different than when he is working in the gym with his teammates.

“The crowd is a different energy all together,” Zehtab-Jadid said. “It’s like you’re in fifth gear. In rolling, you’re going kind of light. This has a different level of intensity. But a big thank you to my opponent because neither of us did any of that dirtbag stuff and we can both go do our job on Monday. We both had a good time out there and I think the crowd kind of got into it, which was cool.”

The inaugural event was organized by Wamma Brandon founder Chris Kading, who was pleased with how everything came together.

“I think it went pretty well from my end of things as far as flow of the event and no major injuries,” Kading said. “Most of the people I’ve talked to seemed to have had a good time, so it went pretty well for our first one ever in Brandon.”

The WMCA was about half full, with onlookers loudly cheering big moments in matches and saluting the competitors when they were over. Kading said it was good attendance for a first event, in part because many people don’t have a good understanding of the sport in a world saturated by MMA.

“A lot of people were still trying to educate people on what jiu-jitsu only is,” Kading said. “Hopefully the people who attended tonight are going to talk highly of it. I think we’ll have no problem filling the next one in the future. We put this one together rather quickly just based on days available.

“We only had six-and-a-half or seven weeks to plan this one after we booked the event. We’ll plan the next one at least four months ahead.”

Kading has already told the fighters who showed up for the first event that they’ll have the right of first refusal on the next one as he fills the card.

That will be music to the ears of blue belt Ren Bouchard, who met purple belt Kyle Schofield of Winnipeg in a closely contested six-minute match the Wamma Brandon fighter ultimately won in overtime.

“It was a great time,” Bouchard said. “I always competed out of Brandon and being home, it was a really different feeling. It’s pretty hard to explain but I remember we here weighing in and getting ready for the fight and just hearing the crowd up there was awesome.”

Unfortunately for Bouchard, his time on the mat came three matches after his daughter Nia Aitken lost to Winnipeg’s Ashley Reimer in a terrific back-and-forth battle that was later named the fight of the night.

The father and daughter train together and share a love for the sport.

“Watching her fighting brought tears to my eyes,” Bouchard said. “It was tough but she held her ground. I’ve been in that position before where it’s endless. You’re just about to tap and you control yourself. I think she did great and I was really proud of her.

“Seventeen years old at a big event like this? That’s winning right there.”

He added that’s a big part of the sport. While the wins and losses are marked down, it’s the people who count.

“My opponent tonight, after we done on the mat where we were trying to tap and submit each other, we started chatting about our backgrounds,” Bouchard said. “You meet so many great people. It’s not a sport where people aren’t nice, people respect each other. They understand the effort they put in to get to the mat.”

Besides the 18 individual fights, a unique team event was held between the undercard and the main card involving five fighters with Brandon ties and five from Thunder Bay.

In the one-on-one battles, if a fighter won, he stayed on the mat to meet the next opponent and the loser was finished. If the five-minute match ended in a draw, both competitors were eliminated.

After a pair of draws, including one when Kading held on for the tie to the delight of the crowd, Thunder Bay’s Donny Thivierge tapped out Troy Stanley in the third fight, and then managed to hold former UFC fighter Joe Doerkson to a draw. After Brandon’s Travis Ratzlaff and AJ Coffey tied in the fifth match, the local team was out of fighters and Thunder Bay won.

It was an engaging interlude in what proved to be a great night for combat sports in Brandon.

“This is amazing,” Zehtab-Jadid said of the evening. “I’ve watched other events, like big-stage events, and this on that calibre with the stage and the lights and the monitors. It’s a big production, and hats off to Chris for pulling it off because this is great. “I hope he does this every year. As long as I’m fit and ready to come, I’ll be here participating or at least observing.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

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