Third Coast Grappling 8: The Underdogs HOT TAKE


For the first time in the promotion’s history, Third Coast Grappling will venture away from its native Houston to bring its unique brand of jiu-jitsu to Phoenix, Arizona. On Saturday, October 23rd, in an event appropriately dubbed “The Underdogs,” eight of the sport’s best grapplers at 180 lbs. will take on a group of mainly local grapplers looking to make a name for themselves and catapult their status from underdog to elite.

Since the start of the pandemic, live entertainment companies have struggled to adapt and find a way to promote their shows while navigating rules and regulations that seemed to be changing on a daily basis. For Third Coast Grappling, it was no different. Per President/CEO Ryan McGuire, “The main struggles during COVID were all the drastic changes. We went from a live crowd driven business to losing our ability to keep going. We got creative and we drove forward. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t easy, but we are better off having went through that phase.”

From these struggles, however, Third Coast course corrected and is now in a better position than ever. McGuire partnered with Fight to Win CEO Seth Daniels, who has helped to breathe new life in the organization. Seth’s contributions include better production quality and the means to take the show on the road, among other things.

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Partnering with Seth has been great. It started with us working together on Fight to Win and then I pitched the idea of us piggybacking the Fight to Win schedule once a month around the country and moving forward with our expansion. He has been nothing but helpful and supportive. As far as new life, he gave us the ability to leave Houston and hit markets he’s built and grown over the years with his analytics. It’s been great and we have a lot of great things planned for rest of this year and 2022.”

The “Underdogs” event will be the first event using this new format, and the first round match ups have fans eagerly awaiting the action on Saturday night. The “Elite 8” consist of Jeferson Guaresi, Andy Varela, Hunter Newton, Oliver Taza, Renato Canuto, Estevan Martinez, Pat Downey, and Jake Shields. These grapplers have won important tournaments such as No Gi Worlds, No Gi Pans, and ADCC Trials, among NCAA wrestling and mixed martial arts credentials.

To read the rest of the article that was written exclusively for FITE By Danny O’Donnell, you can go here.