Today I was down at the L.A. Fit Expo checking out the action at the Gracie National Comps and there were some great competitors.
Alot of BJJ heavies were there with their teams including Saulo Ribeiro, Cleber Luciano, Javi Mendez, Gracie Barra etc... but the big winners were Rickson Gracie Team.
Their guy Shawn won the black belt division and the standout performance was Kron Gracie (Rickson's son) in the brown belt division. Kron has something like a 30 match submission streak going back to the Mundials and he kept it up today, subbing everyone he faced in his division and the absolute.
Kron is 18 or 19 I believe and probably weighs in at 160lbs and went in to the absolute final facing a guy 10 years older and at least 70lbs heavier but subbed him with a beautiful armbar in about 10 seconds!
In his other matches he showed incredible poise and tactics flowing from one sub attempt to the next until he caught them all.
There were alot of MMA guys around too. Randy Couture, Keith Jardine, and John Hackleman all gave MMA seminars, and I saw Babalu, Shonie Carter, and Dean Lister among others hanging out.
I'd guess that MMA-related booths made up about a 1/3 of all the displays and every dude had some MMA or BJJ shirt on - showing how big the sport is getting. Poor bodybuilders, they must've been wondering what the hell is going on - nobody paying attention to their 80's reject fashion anymore
Way more people were waiting to meet Couture than Flex Wheeler.