Baseball Choke

The Baseball Choke shelf opens with a judo man's version, and his whole caption is the technique's nickname explained: "It's like playing baseball" — both hands take the collar like a bat, and the turn is the swing that closes the choke. Yang (Team Beijing; 28 years of judo) appears twice in this archive tonight, his juji gatame over on the Armbar shelf; baseball chokes also live on the Chokes shelf, and this one opens the choke's own.

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Milliken (Tribe Vegas) sets the bat choke from the rudest address in grappling: knee on belly. "Knee on belly is already a miserable place to be — might as well make it worse." His lesson is pressure first: establish the grips while the partner is pinned under the knee, then turn that positional misery into what he calls a one-way ticket to nap time. Where Yang's opener swung from judo grips, this one swings off pure top pressure.

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No collar, no problem: Sales — a second-degree black belt under Jean Jacques Machado, 24 years in — runs the bat choke no-gi, "very powerful if done correctly," crediting Coach Lil Jay for the material. The shelf now holds three grips on the same choke: Yang's gi version out of judo, Milliken's off knee-on-belly pressure, and this one with no lapel to hold at all.

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