NAGA CHICAGO PRO AM

November 6 & 7th, 2004 – Cicero, IL

68 Teams from across the United States made the trip to the Windy City to compete in the NAGA’s 1st Annual Chicago Pro Am Grappling Championship. The Pro Am had 527 grapplers compete in a two day tournament. The event featured 135 Gi & No-Gi Grappling Divisions and 4-Man Professional Tournament among the Midwest’s best instructors.

The NAGA ran 8 consecutive rings each day starting on time at 11:30 AM and ending each day by 4:00 PM.

THANKS TO OUR STAFF:

The success of the NAGA is 100% due to the staff. Chris Dranka and his entire family helped coordinate the event. Bob Schirmer and his army from Combat Do who worked rings, kept time and provided us with tournament mats. Many other instructors such as Jack Mcvicker also offered a hand to help referee.

As always it would be impossible to name everyone who made this event a huge success. We wanted to thank our friends and family who worked the weekend, all the fighters and coaches who came to compete and finally the friends and family of the fighters who sat in the bleachers and cheered throughout the day. The sport is growing at a phenomenal rate and it's success is because of the dedication each and everyone of you bring to it!

Like many competitors, our staff comes from distant states. Dustin Ware and his wife and students came from West Virginia; Elian Rodriguez from Florida; Danny Ives & Mike C. from IN,

Check out full coverage of the NAGC in an upcoming issue of "GRAPPLING MAGAZINE"!!!

THANK YOU SPONSORS:

A special thanks to the events sponsors, BIZ, CASCA GROSSA, WARPATH FIGHT GEAR, PREMIER HEALTH, S.C (Drew Carr) & THE AMERICAN TOP TEAM.

NAGA CUPS

A huge congratulations to the following Team Champions who took home huge NAGA CUPS.
NO-GI CHAMPIONS = COMBAT-DO
GI CHAMPIONS = PEDRO SAUER

$2000 BIZ TEAM CHAMPION

Congratulations to Team Carlson Gracie & Combat-Do for winning the $2000 Biz Team Challenge.

The Team totals were extremely close; the two top teams agreed to split the overall prize money!

It was truly a pleasure to deal with Biz, Combat-Do, Carlson Gracie and the other teams that came to the NAGA Chicago event last weekend! We hope you had a great time.

NEXT CHICAGO NAGA EVENT:

Our next event, which will be a single day event will be in May, tentatively May 21, 2005. More information to come shortly.

4-MAN PROFESSIONAL DIVISION RESULTS
In the 4-Man Professional tournament, the first round saw Bart Pazalaweski square off against Jack McVicker. Bart played an aggressive bottom game, but lost to Jack by a takedown. In the second match Henry Matamoros and John Stutzman had the most exciting match of the day, but it was ended early after Matamoros slammed Stutzman and was disqualified. In the finals McVicker was able to use superior positioning to win the tournament by 2-0 for a pass to cross mount.