T&T's pre­mier com­bat sport train­ing cen­tre Rough House will host its first no-gi sub­mis­sion grap­pling tour­na­ment for 2013 at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann's, from 4 pm, to­day.Af­ter host­ing two ma­jor events, fol­lowed by the na­tion­al grap­pling com­pe­ti­tion last year, or­gan­is­ers, in­clud­ing Dwayne Hinds, opt­ed to re­lo­cate to St Ann's tem­porar­i­ly, to fa­cil­i­tate the 40-plus com­peti­tors sched­uled to chal­lenge for pride and medals.

Some of the more recog­nis­able names in T&T's com­bat sports cir­cle who will be com­pet­ing in­clude na­tion­al box­ing cham­pi­on Joey Cyrus (De­fence Force), na­tion­al ju­do cham­pi­on Chris George (Torakan Do­jo), Sam­bo Pan Am sil­ver medal­list Joash Walkins (Glob­al Mar­tial Arts) and na­tion­al grap­pling cham­pi­on Omar Smith (Rough House).

Hinds, a coach and one of the founders of Rough House, ex­pects the tour­na­ment to sur­pass any oth­er of its kind in T&T."By far, this is go­ing to be our biggest tour­na­ment yet. We have over 40 com­peti­tors from 12 dif­fer­ent schools, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Guyana and To­ba­go."He added, "It's an ex­cit­ing time for no-gi sub­mis­sion grap­pling be­cause with the emer­gence of mixed mar­tial arts as the fastest grow­ing sport in the world, Tri­ni mar­tial artists have re­alised that if they want to be com­pet­i­tive in to­day's mar­tial arts' pre­mier sport (MMA), they must be able to ef­fi­cient­ly fight on the ground. So the great part is we see guys from all dif­fer­ent arts will­ing to com­pete, and us­ing these tour­na­ments as a train­ing ground so when they step in the cage, they can han­dle them­selves in a ground fight."