A few weeks the fever caught up to me again and I decided I needed new gear. Last time it was gloves and a sprawl long sleeve rashie. This time I was looking for shorts and another rash guard. I thought about the xfgear white long sleeve with the American flag on the back but since they are still in the process of restruturing, I went straight to my normal source for clothing
www.ssfgear.com.
A quick couple of mouse clicks and I found what I wanted. A set of black split leg grappling shorts and nogi long sleeve rash guard. As I was looking for a review of these items here on shrdog, I hit upon some glowing reviews for the Mantos brand and got distracted looking at
www.rdfc.tv. After talking with Chris at Red Dragon via PM here on Sherdog I was about to place an order till I saw the exposed drawstring on the Mantos shorts, which for me is a deal breaker. So back to Ron I went, he was temporarily out of the black split leg shorts in 34 so I ended up with his newer Black and gray “grappling shorts”.
http://ssfgear.com/shopsite_sc/product10.html
I placed the order and 2 days later I received them via the reliable US post office.
These shorts feature the same closure system as SSF’s split leg shorts consisting of inter-locking Velcro panels, a drawstring and elastic. In the year I have had my split seams this combo has yet to fail. Never forcing me to run ashamed from the mat as my Care Bears underwear was revealed. But instead of flex panels on the inside of the leg and split seams on the outside these have flex panels both inside and out. These panels are in gray, which contrasts nicely with the black body of the shorts. I was hoping that the vertical lines would provide camo for my middle age self. Another difference I noticed is that the logo on the leg has a white background and brighter letters making it stand out more compared to his older series of shorts. I had originally wanted the split seams but I think I might like these even better. No longer will I worry about my pasty white butt hanging out of my jock while I roll around being dominated by other men in my guard.
My other SSF branded shorts are 34s and that is the size I ended up ordering. Upon trying them on however I found that although the waist was a tad tight the hips were more than a tad on the tight side. The seams were pulling against fabric, but tanks to the stretch panels they were still super comfy. After a quick trip to the scale to confirm I hadn’t gained a few pounds. I voted to go head and send them back for the net size up.
I did this will full confidence that SSF would promptly ship me my shorts back quickly, having ordered from them before. During this Ron confirmed that some of the grappling shorts ran a hair tight through the hips. Since I have trouble fitting jeans through the hips I’m sort of use to this. So my shorts went back in the mail and head back to TN.
Next Update SSF Grappling shorts in a bigger size
and the NOGI rashgaurd thread