Gunnar out of Open Class at the Mundials
The brown belt Open Class division was today. Gunnar met last year lightweight World Champion Ryan Beauregard (now competing in middle weight) in his first match and lost by a controversial decision. We’ll let Gunnar’s teammate do the talking but this was posted at the Renzo Gracie forum after the match:
"In the brown belt absolute earlier in the day our favorite Viking fighter and 2009 Pan AM and NY OPEN champion Gunnar Nelson fought a tough battle against last year's Leve World Champ Ryan Beauregard (his opponent this year is fighting at Middle weight so even if it was absolute from a weight point they were even).
The clue point of this match was right at the beginning. Gunnar's opponent attempted a drop Seoi Nage. Gunnar stuffed the throw, and proceeded to attack the back. After a battle to control the turtle Gunny ended up on bottom. Unfortunately the ref raised the hand to award Beauregard the two points that decided the match (no more points were scored; his opponent was in my opinion stalling for most part of the match).
This was probably a very controversial call (but not the only one in a long day of BJJ fights). It's true that the opponent initiated the take down, but as Gunnar proceeded to attack the back for a few seconds there was no real continuation of the action, and being the turtle a neutral position the opponent should have not been awarded those points. Gunnar will be fighting again tomorrow in his regular weight division."
