This almost made me cry today. I teared up a little.
I've been doing BJJ since 2011. I've trained hundreds of hours and applied and received thousands of choke holds. I'd never seen the video until now, so I assumed that Floyd was on his back when Chauvin was kneeling on him. After all, that's the only way it could have killed him.
Then I saw the body camera footage.
My heart sank and I started to tear up as I realized that this is why America burned to the ground. This is why more than thirty people like David Dorne died in the most destructive riots in American history. Because of something so abjectly absurd and ignorant.
You couldn't get a tap from that on the mat, much less kill a man, with a knee in that position. Much less 140 lb Chauvin on 230 lb Floyd. I'm 6'3" and 230 lbs. I have an intuitive, deeply ingrained, trained-in sense of what it would take for a choke to work on a body like mine.
There's no way on God's green Earth that Chauvin killed that man. The trapezius is a huge muscle protecting the back of the neck. Chauvin would have to weigh 1000 lbs to kill him with that knee. It's just not possible
It had to be the drugs, COVID, or some combination.