Craig Jones recently took the time to break down the match between Nicky Rodriguez and Dan Manasoiu that happened in the final of the absolute tournament of UFC Fight Pass Invitational 4. He started out by assessing his own performance, as he was also competing at the same event in the headline match. Jones was taking on Felipe Pena in the main event and it was an incredibly tough match between the two men, with neither one being able to secure a finish in regulation time. After he’d discussed his own performance, Jones moved on to discussing the phenomenal absolute tournament that the promotion had put together for the event:
“The real star of the show here is Nicky Rod. Nicky Rod takes out the most stacked EBI rules event in history. No one has ever won an event with EBI rules this stacked. To beat Roberto Jimenez, to beat Vagner Rocha, who else did we have in the tournament? Haisam Rida, we also had Gabriel Arges, two-time gi world champion. This event was stacked and again, I don’t think anyone in EBI history has ever won an event with this many big names in there. I went back and looked at the list of EBI competitors that were in some of the events I was involved in, and some of the events Gordon (Ryan) won. Yeah, it pales in comparison to the people in this event.”
As Craig Jones explained, Nicky Rodriguez had to beat some fantastic competitors to book his place in the final opposite Dan Manasoiu. Before he broke down that match though, he took a little time to discuss something specific that happens under John Danaher at New Wave Jiu-Jitsu and explained an issue he has with it:
“I really wanna talk about his match with big Dan (Manasoiu). Apparently big Dan is a junior competitor despite being 300lbs. Let’s all call it what it is. If your coach calls you a junior, he doesn’t wanna take ownership of you for your losses. It’s a way to protect his brand, it’s a way to protect the other elite-level competitor’s brands. Here at B-Team, everyone’s a part of B-Team. Everyone’s on equal footing, no ones gonna beat a B-Team guy and I’m gonna be like ‘That guy’s a f*cking junior’ and absolutely disrespect my training partners like that. In all teams we’re not gonna have people as good as the elite-level guys, that’s the reality of it. Some people train their whole life, their never gonna make an elite-level status. But really if you train full-time, if you’ve won things like ADCC trials, if you’re a 300lb man out of Transylvania, and your coach calls you a junior? It might be time to have some self-respect and find a coach that treats you like a human being.”
After the short break for that rant, Craig Jones got back to discussing the match between Nicky Rodriguez and Dan Manasoiu. Obviously Rodriguez is Jones’ teammate at B-Team Jiu-Jitsu so he would naturally favor him, but he was nothing but complementary about Manasoiu’s skillset too:
“Nicky Rod takes on big Dan in the final. Big Dan, incredibly talented guy. What’s rare about big Dan is he’s a heavyweight and he’s a finisher. He grapples like a smaller opponent and he hits vicious finishes. Sometimes a bit too vicious, breaking people’s legs all the time. So I was quite nervous going into this match because again, you don’t want someone with 50-60lb weight advantage on you that hates you, that’s from a team that hates you, that gets to start in a submission position when it goes to overtime. That’s a scary prospect. That’s a scary prospect for anyone except Nicky Rod.”
UFC Fight Pass Invitational 4 was a fantastic event from start to finish, but the final between these two men was an especially entertaining match. The most notable moment actually came in the overtime rounds, when Nicky Rodriguez found himself in a tight armbar from Dan Manasoiu but he executed a technique that Craig Jones is very familiar with to escape:
“So during regulation Nicky Rod passes his guard three times, starts to melt him, right? We go to overtime, he gets put in two armbars. One he escapes like nothing, the second one big Dan gets it to full extension and holds it locked for a bit. Nicky Rod hits a move that’s basically a reverse hitchhiker, I think it’s one of the best ways to escape a fully extended armbar. It’s something I worked on extensively with (Alexander) Volkanovski for when he faced Islam Makhachev because Sambo guys, two to three submissions max, that’s all they know in grappling.”
“So he was able to use this reverse hitchhiker escape. The problem with the reverse hitchhiker, it really looks like your arms being broken but the damage isn’t anywhere near as bad as a failed regular hitchhiker escape… Go back and watch Fabricio Werdum vs Vinny Magalhaes, he uses a form of the reverse hitchhiker. Get your shoulder high off the ground, turn your thumb down, don’t turn your thumb out, and he gets out of big Dan’s armbar and goes on to choke him with the same arm during his next (overtime) period and we all lost our minds backstage. We were all super inspired by that performance.”
The footage of Craig Jones breaking down the Nicky Rodriguez v Dan Manasoiu match from UFC Fight Pass Invitational 4 was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of B-Team Jiu-Jitsu:
