Thoug(Part 2)

  In this event for me the most interesting category was the superheavyweight category of right hand because it was the first time that I saw Michael Todd in this great event. Michael is undoubtly one of the best in the world but I must say that I was disappointed with his performance. Not that because he has lost the event or because of taking 7. place but his general performance did not seem great. Pushkar won against Michael after a powerful hit but I also saw that right after the pin Michael was able to get into the position that he likes even though it was too late but still this made me think that his form is good because Pushkar is not the same Pushkar whom Michael beat 6-0 years ago. At that time Pushkar was still pulling World and European events and I am sure that today he is stronger.

Michael’s match against the Polish puller Slowamir Glowacki was the match that disappointed me as Glowacki took 7th place in 2016 WAF in +40 years masters category only 1,5 month ago. No doubt Glowacki is a strong guy but in my opinion Michael should not be pulling near 2 minutes long match against him. Of course that is only my expectation of such a match. It looked like Michael got hurt at the end of this match and also lost another match to take 7th place. The way that Glowacki pulled was the similar was that Michael pulls and it was interesting to see Michael pulling with his shoulder higher than his opponent’s shoulder. I wonder if Michael for a moment thought: “That must be how my opponents have been feeling against me”.

I don’t say all these to criticize Michael but it was really interesting to see them pulling that way.

Pushkar looked strong but his draw was harder than Trubin’s as he had to pull Michael Todd, Genady Kvikvinia and Dmitry Trubin all on A side. He won the first 2 without much problems but his match against Trubin was awesome! Trubin won against Grigaitis on fouls at the refs grip but I believe that Grigaitis could cause problems to him if they would have actually pulled eachother. Anyways, Pushkar in the strap easily toprolled Trubin and we all thought that it was over as we don’t see Trubin fighting effectively with a dead wrist against the best superheavyweights in the world. So Trubin stopped Pushkar and Pushkar was kind of hanging low to pin Trubin only with his pronator-brachiradialis coordinated pressure. Trubin put his shoulder more and more behind to apply some joint pressure against the mostly muscle dependant pressure of Pushkar. So since Pushkar was not able to bring his shoulder high and finish it with a shoulder press he got tired and started to move back to losing side and got an elbow foul. I kind of expected him to lose the match because he is not known as an endurance guy but I did not expect Trubin to toproll Pushkar at their second start. Pushkar unlike the first start must have wanted to go straight side to apply more of joint pressure and this caused him to apply less back pressure and then Trubin was able to survive his hand this time. Once Trubin was able to use his wrist he automatically was able to apply his toproll skill against Pushkar whose hand control is not as good as his opponent’s. So this time Trubin was the hunter and Pushkar was the hunt. Pushkar gave his all to win the match but his endurance was not good enough, not to mention that Trubin is a a very technical puller with a high level endurance. After having 6 rounds pulling experience against Michael Todd it was not so hard Trubin to beat Pushkar once he toprolled him.