The adult male black belt roosterweight semifinal between Milton Bastos (Brasa CTA) and Ivaniel Oliveira (Checkmat) was nerve-racking.
The drama started early on, when Milton caught Ivaniel in a tight triangle.
Referee Andre Glodzinski was paying close attention to the defense attempt by Ivaniel and at one point he was convinced that the Checkmat athlete had lost conscience, which meant the fight was over.
Glodzinski stopped the match and to his surprise, Ivaniel was wide awake and saying he did not tap.
“I saw his legs relaxing and was sure he had slept, so I stopped the match. Thinking back, I should have checked Ivaniel’s legs closely before stopping it. The thing is that the fight prior to that one ended with one of the athletes cold out and my action was to preserve his physical integrity” explained Andre.
The solution for the mistake came in the form of two points for Milton and the restart of the match at the point it was interrupted.
The problem for Bastos was that he went from submitting his opponent to being in deep waters soon after.
As soon as the match restarted, Ivaniel went for it and passed Milton’s guard.
Now behind in the scoreboard, Milton kept playing guard and almost had another triangle choke in place.
Ivaniel escaped and almost got Milton’s back with less than one minute left.
That’s when things got unreal.
With the clock running out, Milton escaped the back attack and rolled on top to attack Ivaniel’s back himself.
First he put the hooks to score 4 points and then went for the neck.
With seconds to the end, Ivaniel did what he didn’t do in the beginning and tapped three times.
Bastos’ celebration came out with the intensity that only those who have to win twice the same match can reach.
He tried to put it into words: “Gosh, it’s hard to explain! It was a relief from the frustration of having the match restarted. This frustration quickly became joy when I tapped him again. I didn’t even know how much time left we had and all I heard was my coaches Samir Chantre and Osvaldo Moizinho telling me to put the hooks in to win. I did that, but I also felt that my hand was deep in his collar and all I wanted was to submit him again.”
Click here and relive the thrills of one of the best matches of the 2014 Pan.
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