Alessio de Liberti wins in NY and Hamburg

Our grappler Alessio de Liberti left Livorno, Italy to venture alone in the No Gi Pan-Ams last week in New York. His effort was not in vain, as he brought home the gold medal in the blue belt master division under 67kg.

No Gi Pan-Am Results (blue belt master feather)

1st: Alessio de Liberti – Rio Grappling Club
2nd: Alberto Robles – Renzo Gracie
3rd: Kevin Saboe – Kioto
3rd: Scott Vieira – Renzo Gracie

Not a person to sit down in the sofa after a win, Alessio went this weekend to Hamburg, Germany, fighting in a submission tournament with rules without points or time limit. He submitted 6 opponents to become the winner there, a great achievement only a week after the comp in NY.

We hope his feat inspires all our grapplers. Alessio always competes, in big and small tournaments, and his dedication is being paid with fantastic results.

ADCC 2009 Barcelona – results

The most prestigious Grappling Tournament in the World, the ADCC Submission Wrestling World Championships is still happening in Barcelona, with the Male and Female Open Divisions scheduled to start soon. Here the results of the weight divisions:

-66kgs:

1. Rafael Mendes
2. Rubens Cobrinha
3. Ryan Hall

-77kgs:

1. Pablo Popovitch
2. Marcelo Garcia
3. Gregor Gracie

-88kgs:

1. Braulio Estima
2. Andre Galvao
3. David Avellan

-99kgs:

1. Xande Ribeiro
2. Gerard Rinaldi
3. Vinicius Magalhaes

+99kgs:

1. Fabricio Werdum
2. Roberto Cyborg
3. Jeff Monson

Superfight:
Jacare won against Robert Drysdale

Women’s -60kgs:

1. Luanna Alzuguir
2. Sayaka Shioda
3. Hillary Williams

Women’s +60kgs:

1. Hannette Staak
2. Penny Thomas
3. Cris Cyborg

Once again brazilian grapplers dominated the event, winning all weight divisions and the superfight. As soon as the Open Weight divisions end, we will publish their results.

Polish BJJ Championships

Saturday 22nd of November, we travelled to Lodz for the IV Polish Nationals. The tournament had about 670 participants, I believe that it is now the biggest national BJJ competition in Europe. Bigger comps are the European Championships in Portugal, Seni in England and the Scandinavian Open, but those have people from many countries, most national comps have less than 200 participants.

The level of the participants was very high, but the organizational level was amateur to say the least. Many fighters arrived in the morning and waited until the evening to fight, there were mats without fights all the time, many mistakes made by the referees, some of them were blue belts, and one of my students, caught in a triangle, stood up to escape and the ref stopped the fight. He later explained that it was perfectly executed technique so he decided to end the fight (the inexperience of some of the refs annoyed me, but this was adding insult to injury).

The most incredible thing was to see that the organisers printed in all the shirts of the refs the logo of their club, but of course the thing that affects mostly the fighters are the mistakes done in their fights and the time they have to wait without knowing when to fight, it was evident that they should have hired someone experienced to help them to cope with the task, but seems that some people just do not care.

One of the requirements to fight was to have some sort of health insurance, but if you did not have it, just pay for one made on the spot, valid for six months. The doctor check your Id, sign it but he does not even check your health. Some people in Poland are copying the bad habits of their masters from Brasil, unfortunately.

Anyways, this affected not only our guys but everyone competing, and we had some good results, with some of our fighters doing better than expected while others felt more the pressure and the problems. We participated with 35 people and had 3 golds, 2 silvers and 4 or 5 bronzes.

I have results of our athletes but perhaps one or two bronze medals are missing, if that is true, I will later fix that here.

Juniors (white and blue together)

-74kg
3rd place – Lukasz Swatowski

+ 84,3kg
1st place – Lukasz Dzibk
3rd place – Adrian Kremski

White Belts

-64kg
1st place – Mateusz Szynek
2nd place – Kamil Ciepulis

-76 kg
1st place – Patrik Horbatiuk

Blue Belts

-100kg
3rd place – Slawomir Swiatala

Elite (purple, brown and black together)

-76kg
3rd place – Krystian Kwiecien

-94kg
2nd place – Tomasz Drozdzik

Congratulations to all the guys that came from Wroclaw, Dabrowa Gornicza, Kielce, Lubliniec and Zawiercie, winning or losing, they showed skills and represented well our club.

Grappling competition results from England

Applied Fighting Systems in Surrey is an associated club to the Rio Grappling Club network since 2004 when I started teaching classes there. The head coach, Steve Haydock, received the purple, brown and black belts from my hands. The results of his students reflect his dedication to coaching and his total commitment to technical quality and as our only representative in England, the club aims high and has achieved impressive results in the last years. 2008 barely started and he already sent me good news from 2 different No Gi grappling competitions.

Quick results:

Angrr Management Grappling Challenge (Bristol) – 23/02/2008

Dave Pawan – Gold medal, Advanced Division, -93 kgs

Grapplers Showdown (London) – 22/03/2008

Tim Murray – Silver medal, 3 to 6 Yrs, -79 kgs
Dave Pawan – Gold Medal, 1 to 3 Yrs, -93 kgs
Jamil Sorouji – Gold and Silver Medals, +6 Yrs, Open Weight and Men’s Absolute

An impressive thing is that Jamil has been training for less than 3 years and already won many comps with and without GI!

Jamil Sorouji, my great friend Wallid from Carlson Gracie London and Lubomir Repaski, finalists of the Men’s Absolute

For complete results and more pictures of the Grapplers Showdown, go to grapplers-showdown.com

RGC Italia

This week I arrived in Livorno, Italy, where my friend Bernardo Serrini lives and teaches. It is my seventh visit to this beautiful country, and there are lots of things to cheer about, like the growing number of participants in Livorno, Ferrara, La Spezia and Bologna, the seamless integration of all our students and their excellent results in competitions all over the country, as well as my better understanding of the language, which helps my classes and make me feel like home.

Tomorrow is Sunday and there will be a big tournament in Modena. It will be the first time I will coach them during a competition and a great opportunity to see them performing under pressure. Monday I will post full results and pictures of our team, but the year has started and our guys have done well so far in other comps. Results are posted below:

Naples BJJ Tournament – 9th of March

Ion Condei (white belt/RGC Bologna) 1st place at both open class and -88.3 kgs

ADCC Italy – 23rd of February

Matteo Menna (RGC Ferrara) – 2nd place, B Class, -67 kgs
Matteo Tugnoli (RGC Bologna) – 3rd place, B Class, -67 kgs

ADCC Italy – 13th of January

Bernardo Serrini (RGC Livorno) – 1st place, A Class, – 88kgs

Group picture in Livorno yesterday

More results from Italy

Gianluca Boni (RGC Italy, Bologna and Ferrara) has sent me results from the latest grappling comp in Italy, the V INTERNATIONAL OLIMPIC SUBMISSION WRESTLING TOURNAMENT. Two of our students got silver medals on this No Gi tournament held on the 25th of November in the city of Modena.

Names and divisions are listed below:

Pier Andrea Petazzi RGC Bologna -78Kg C Class
Ion Condei RGC Bologna -88Kg C Class

Bravo Ragazzi, ci vediamo a presto!

Our latest comp results

As our network expands, our athletes are competing in BJJ and Grappling tournaments all over the world. This time we bring excellent results from our team in California, Scotland and England.

Califronia, 09.08.07. Five of our teammates fought: Eddie Sullivan, Jesse Stewart, Lee Harding, John Dillon and Matt Boga, and they done well. Matt Bogan scored a 3rd. place on the teens middle weight white belt division and John Dillon had an awesome performance, winning the white belt heavy weight and absolute open weight divisions. Total of 7 matches, 3 on the heavy and four at the open. Props to John that returned in September to fight the American Nationals, winning again his division.

In England, Steve Haydock brought some students to the Southern Open in Sudbury on the 30th of September and Jamil won again the blue belt middle heavy division, with Dave Pawan scoring third place. Jamil and Dave got their purple belts at my seminar this week. The teenager division saw two of our grapplers getting medals, with Lawrence Searle scoring first and James Anderson coming in third.

And in Scotland, where the 1st. Caledonian BJJ Open was held, our guys came second to none, winning all white belt divisions along with a few medals in the blue belt. Final results of the Caledonian BJJ Open are expected to be released tomorrow and soon a complete list will be published here. Big props to our guys from Glasgow, Aberdeen, Ayr and Kilmarnock that did very well in the first BJJ competition in Scotland.

Well done to everyone, and big props to our coaches Pedro Soriano (California), Steve Haydock (England), Paul McVeigh (Glasgow), Adam (Kilmarnock), Peter Richardson and his assistant Siva (Aberdeen). What can I say? Keep up the excellent job!