According to multiple witness reports, purple belt Freddy Roberts has already broken the New Years resolution he made at the holiday open mat at his academy.
Roberts, 29, had previously stated publicly on social media that he would be refraining from any guard-pulling for the duration of 2018, writing: “New Year, new style. Gonna work my wrestling more. Takedowns and throws all day. My goal is to not pull guard EVEN ONCE this whole year, and yuo [sic] can hold me to that!!!”
Roberts’ post accrued nearly a dozen “likes” on Facebook, with one person commenting, “I’ll believe it when I see it lol.” But early this morning, an anonymous source reported to the Jiu-Jitsu Times that Roberts had pulled guard just three rounds into the New Years open mat.
“We’ve heard him say it before, that he was done with that b.s.,” said the source, “He’s let us down every time, and we don’t even get surprised anymore when he just sits guard immediately after slap-bumping. But I guess we were holding out hope that this time would be different.”
A second source close to the situation tearfully confirmed the account to the JJT. “I’m sorry, I’m a grown man and I haven’t cried since my grandfather’s funeral. This is out of character for me. But, man, we all just had so much hope for him. We’d never seen him so motivated before. He even showed up to the 7 a.m. wrestling class last Friday and half-assed a few double-legs.”
Roberts didn’t deny the allegations, but asserted that 2018 was still going to be the year he stopped trying to convince people that he was dropping to the ground in record time to work on his leg locks. “I haven’t been honest with my teammates, but most importantly, I haven’t been honest with myself,” he said. “I’m not fooling anyone — they all know that my ultimate goal is to just strategically lie on my back so I can find that nice middle ground between training and sleeping. But that’s the old me.”
Roberts referred us to his coach, Mike Lawrence, 38, who was confident that his student would one day at least be “decent” on his feet and that he had “complete faith” that Roberts would make good on his resolution. “We’ll be there for him throughout his whole journey one he decides he actually wants to start it, but he has to take that first step. But I guess his unwillingness to take any steps at all is what made him a guard-puller in the first place, so…”
At press time, Roberts had posted no less than three motivational quotes about “moving forward” and “new beginnings” on his Facebook and Instagram pages.
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