This article and the accompanying footage of Sam Micale vs Chris Tran from Place of Peace Invitational 5 is part of Free Fight Friday, our ongoing project to bring the best in professional Jiu-Jitsu competition to everyone. To avoid spoilers for the match, scroll directly to the footage below.
Place of Peace Invitational has gone from strength to strength since they first joined the world of professional grappling and they’ve regularly managed to book matches between top competitors. Their most recent event was no exception either and some great matchmaking actually resulted in one of the most entertaining no gi matches of the year so far. Sam Micale is a very talented grappler who was actually promoted to black belt by Tom DeBlass just a month prior to this match, and he was facing a massive challenge from elite no gi veteran Chris Tran.
Tran has been a BJJ black belt since 2021 and he has represented Crazy 88 Jiu-Jitsu at the highest levels of the sport, reaching the podium of both the IBJJF No Gi Pan Championship and the IBJJF No Gi World Championship since then. It was always going to be an entertaining match but it genuinely ended up being the most exciting battle of the night and one of the most action-packed that the promotion has ever seen. It was Tran who got his hand raised at the end but it was a close decision and if a handful of exchanges had gone differently then it might have gone in Micale’s favor instead.
Subscribe to the official JitsMagazine YouTube channel for more Free Fight Friday footage, and the full match between Sam Micale and Chris Tran can be found below:
