Having learnt Dragin’s Left Ippon Seoi Nage, now let’s take a look and analyse how he executed it in competition.
The first round of the 2011 Paris Grand Slam saw Dragin send the home crowd into raptures with this spectacular example of his Left Seoi against Turkey's Uzun.
While side stepping, Dragin has already created the triangle between his right leg and Uzun’s legs. He pulls on the sleeve, steps the left leg in, makes contact with the hip lifting Uzun off the ground. A little adjustment and rotation and he sends his opponent crashing down to the mat.
The following year in Paris, and Dragin executed another enormous Ippon Seoi Nage. This time it was Ecuador’s Israel Verdugo who fell victim.
Dragin really pushes on the lapel, and that makes Verdugo push back. As soon as Dragin feels this reaction, he’s straight in and underneath him.
The hip coming through really sends the Ecuadorean up into the air. Thanks to the strong grip on the lapel and arm, Dragin was able to keep control and rotate him over for the Ippon.
In the following fight against Tomasz Kowalski of Poland, Dragin comes incredibly close to scoring.
He doesn’t quite have control of Kowalski’s arm when he brings in the second one, this gives the Polish Judoka just enough space to rotate out.
Down a score to Kazakhstan’s Sergey Lim, in the repecharge contest at the 2013 Paris Grand Slam, Dragin manages to even it up thanks to his Ippon Seoi.
Lim manages to get a hand down to try and avoid the score, however due to the strong grip Dragin has on the arm he’ s able to continue to rotate through, sending the Kazak onto his side for the score.
This example is a little different to the others due to Lim being on the move. Dragin still manages to get into the ‘playground area’
From there he sends the hip in while pulling on the lapel. Because Lim is still on the move, Dragin hasn’t managed to get his hip right in the middle of Lim’s body. But this doesn't matter as he still has contact with him.
All Dragin has to do is continue to drive up, reposition his legs and rotate through.
The final example again comes from the Paris Grand Slam, in round 1 of the 2014 tournament, where Dragin is up against Bradford Bolen of America.
Having positioned himself in the playground area, Dragin fakes for the Seoi. Bolen reacts and Dragin follows it up with his actual attack.
He doesn’t get the lift he ideally wants, which stops him being able to reposition his left leg next to the right. Because of this Dragin has to make sure he really rotates through to secure the score.