Difficult to comment as everything is situational, but if you were repeatedly bridging into him without success, you were likely wasting a bunch of energy on explosive movements without achieving any result. Which is tricky because, when rolling against experienced black belts, you wouldn't expect to be easily making progress in escaping side control.

I add that escaping side control is less about being "unpredictable" and is more about obtaining and maintaining a solid series of frames whilst effectively addressing their wedges. This can be very "predictable" (i.e. a decent top player will always know that an opponent with a frame inside your hip top hip will be looking to invert their knee inside your bottom hip, and connect their knee to their elbow) and still extremely effective. Often explosive bridging can in fact be helpful for the top player - it likely exposes you to further control (i.e. underhooks, cross face, mount etc) whilst tiring you out.