Nyjah Easton fresh off a spectacular 2008 season, winning both the 2008 pan ams and 2008 World Championships at the purple belt level.

Nyjah received her brown belt and was looking to challenge herself against the BIG DOGS of the brown and black belt divisions.  Then her wishes came true, a tournament in San Diego was looking for an opponent for Female BJJ Black Belt World Champion Michelle Nicolini.

I guess if you want to test yourself, you might as well do it against the ‘very best’.  Everything seemed perfect, Nyjah was going to get her very first match against the best black belt in her weight class (pluma). At the last moment Michelle wasn’t able to compete anymore.

Then they were having a extremely hard time to find a replacement, it didn’t look like Nyjah was going to have an opponent.

Then the promoter said he found another black belt who had took the silver and the bronze in the last 2 Black Belt World championships, the only problem was that she was 2 weight classes heavier than where Nyjah fought(leve). When Nyajh found out she didn’t care and just wanted to go and compete.

So Nyjah and Lenny took off to San Diego(well kind of), they missed their flight, got booked on a 2nd wrong flight and they we’re told that all flights where booked and there was no way they could get to San Diego.  So what did they do? They flew to LA, slept in the airport for 6 hours and then caught a flight to San Diego to compete.

The story is much crazier than that, but you gotta hear it directly from Lenny or Nyjah(so ask them about it the next time you see them in class).

Anyway Nyjah finally got to compete in the black belt division.  After pulling guard Nyjah hits a lightning fast sweep to score 2 points, a few minutes later Gabby hits a sweep on Nyjah, score is 2-2, then Nyjah said “the passing pressure that I felt was out of this World”, after awhile Gabby passed Nyjah’s guard, near the late period of the match Gabby was able to secure a side choke in and finish Nyjah for the victory.

Nyjah was very excited as she learned what to expect at that level. Nyjah said “It was a great learning experience.  I need to start working more with the heavier guys in the school, her passing pressure was extremely tight”, “I can’t wait until this years Worlds, but I need some more matches like this one”

Next up, “The US OPEN”

Terceiro Gabriela Bermudez Gracie Humaita

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 6:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.