You'd probably be right if this were against an adult with years of BJJ or wrestling experience who was planning counters to known strategies and had seen that before. But this particular incident was 35 years ago in a middle school wrestling tournament. That particular guy certainly didn't expect it...there just weren't a whole lot of 12-14 year olds using that back then. And he didn't do anything specific to counter it...I just didn't get a good tight grip on him before I rolled and it just didn't work out that particular time. I was down in points late and was trying to get the Escape, Reversal and Backpoints all in one move. The odds that this guy had ever even seen a Granby roll at that point in time is right up there with the odds of him having seen Bigfoot chasing a leprechaun riding a unicorn. I just missed pulling it off. Sometimes things don't work at 100% resistance...especially the more complex they are.
My point was virtually every technique works 100% at 25% resistance, 50% of stuff works at 50% resistance , 25% works at 75% resistance and very little really works repeatably at 100% resistance. We need to be careful as instructors about what we teach as answers to life and death problems when all we have the student for is a couple of days....or less... and even then it is on the student to take what we teach them and work it to perfection after that. The class certificate isn't going to save them... the hard work they put in mastering the skills later will (hopefully- because luck plays a part and anything CAN fail).
I cannot do multi quote: So am I commenting on 2 things here.
In 2013 at the Tactical Conference I nearly completely choked out the dude in the red man suit in a weapons retention/disarm seminar. I knew how good my lock was on him but I did not thinks this big,tall, young athletic dude would go down so easy. I got a semi stern talking to from the instructor that this was not 100%. I told him it was not not nearly 100%. But the wrist was restricting the veins so it was effective. There were cases in that seminar where redman let some ladies win, and that was creating a false sense of security.
Techniques can fail because of the resistance of the opponent. They can fail because I am not good at them. They can fail because I slipped or did not execute well. Everything is harder in the fight, match or real world.
Have you ever muffed a golf shot walked up and hit the ball 200 yards with the next swing?
Have you ever fumbled a draw horribly and then the next one was a 1 second draw?
Ever try and punch someone and swing and miss?
Nobody bats 1000.