Already running for five years uninterrupted, the Polish Nationals happen in different places, always in November. This year it was Kozmin Wp. the town chosen. There was sensible improvement from last years competition. This time medals were specially made, I was impressed with the quality. The comp had two days so the times were respected, but occasionally they did not manage to use well the four areas, making some competitors wait too long between fights.
Refereeing is a big problem everywhere, and in Poland it is not different. Many mistakes and lack of information of common procedures by referees happened all the time. I did see refs making mistakes, but I did not see refs cheating or erring on purpose, so a bit of training and better understanding on rules can do a big difference for next year.
The level of BJJ in Poland has been improving fast, and now we see many talented brown belts, specially in the light weight division where all the four finalists could win european comps at any time. Piotr Bagi (Berserkers), as always, fought everything, winning the absolute on Saturday and returned Sunday. Suffering a leg contusion on the finals, he still swept his opponent but fell short of one advantage to win the match.
The Heavyweight Elite Division (Brown and Black belts, over 88 kgs), was completely dominated by our grappler Mariusz Koziej. He simply overcame all his three opponents, establishing side or knee control, choking them all with variations of the same technique, as can be seen on the videos below. One can notice that he uses leverage and technique on all matches, demonstrating technique rather than power, with so much control that his opponents simply cannot react.
Mariusz was awarded the trophy of best fighter of the tournament, honouring our club with this brilliant achievement and demonstration of his potential. The Rio Grappling Club is proud to have him colaborating so much to the growth and improvement of our students, and his victory will give us extra motivation to next year competitions. Yes We Can!
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.
The African Continent is the most isolated when it comes to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. One can find renowned brazilian coaches of BJJ in North America, Middle East, Asia, Australasia and Europe, as well as many competitions of all sizes, but in Africa the locals must do with what they have. Not many black belt travel often there, and the distance for them to travel is huge, so very seldom African fighters have the chance to train in Brasil or North America. I met some South Africans living in England and training BJJ there, but most of them don’t return home, which would contribute more substantially to the growth of the sport in their area.
When it comes to competition, the problems are even bigger. The distances between the major cities can only be covered by plane, offering another challenge to the fighters that must struggle with money in order to compete. So even competitions have mostly hometown crews entering them, not many people can afford flying from Luanda or Johannesburg to Cape Town and vice-versa to dispute medals.
Having read that, one would think that BJJ is pretty small in Africa, and the level is not really high. Nonsense! The local fighters have a very good grappling, the clubs are booming in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Luanda, as well as in other parts. All comes down to dedication, and after 4 trips to South Africa, I can say those guys are serious about grappling and committed to overcome the barriers.
So the importance of the Abu Dhabi African Trials to Africa is huge and cannot be underestimated. For the first time, a BJJ competition will be offering the chance to local fighters to qualify and have all expenses paid to compete in the most prestigious BJJ tournament in the World. Distributing over Us$ 148,000.00 to the competitors in the next main event, the Abu Dhabi BJJ Pro World Cup offers a real chance to 5 Africans to go compete against the BJJ elite next April in the UAE. This event will be a turning point to BJJ in Africa, allowing all practitioners to fight for the chance to represent their flag in the biggest professional BJJ competition.
This opportunity is only possible due to the generosity of the National Government of the United Arab Emirates, which will pay the flights, accommodation and grant Visas to the five African qualifiers, as well as others qualified through the same process around the World. This initiative is an effort of Carlos Santos and Fernando Paradeda, sponsored by H. H. Sheik Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyam, Patron of the World Professional Jiu Jitsu Cup.
We’d like to thank them for making it possible, as well as to our local crew in South Africa that is putting the pieces together to deliver a great tournament: Nathan Raaths, Sheryl Newman, Reinhardt Fourie, Jurgen Putter, Michal Shapiro, Stuart Rider and the Rio Grappling Club South Africa Crew that are contributing to bring this project alive.
5th of December will mark this important step towards including Africa in the map of Professional Jiu Jitsu, with the Trials happening in Johannesburg, and if all goes well, the idea of the organisers is to expand the number of qualifiers in future trials, opening even more the doors of Professional Jiu Jitsu to Africans and helping promote the sport all over the continent. We hope to have the full support of all the African Grappling community, because this is a project worth being involved with, one that will bring inclusion not only to South Africans but to the whole continent.
Back in 1990, when I started grappling, professional Jiu Jitsu would sound like an utopian dream. The official state BJJ tournament was boycotted by most clubs, the Brazilian Nationals did not exist, and the biggest comp we had was the Atlantico Sul, named after a condo in Barra da Tijuca.
BJJ was barely practiced in most parts of Brasil, with Rio de Janeiro and Amazon states being the only significant ones in terms of numbers and technical quality. Fighters supported themselves by teaching or other daytime jobs, and most sponsors would give us food, tournament fees and clothes.
As a surfer, I always dreamt of seeing BJJ being practiced everywhere, with a professional tour and decent prizes.
With the success of Royce in the UFC and the explosion of MMA , Jiu Jitsu experimented a growth that most of us would never think of, and competitions are happening all over the World, with the most significant growth in North America.
Unlike surf that is organised by former athletes and became global, bringing money and professional marketing to the sport, BJJ is controlled by a mob that preys on its competitors, offering no more than a t-shirt and a medal to athletes. The money itself only goes one way, from the wallet of the fighters to the pocket of the parasites that mix personal and public interest with a clean face.
After more than 15 years of constant abuse and exploit, it is a shame that athletes keep supporting this scam, conducted by the same people that control the Brazilian, American and International Federations since their inception, without elections and without being accountable to anyone.
This group has no interest in developing BJJ as a professional sport, as they would have to share their revenues with the people generating them. If we wait for them, professional BJJ will never happen.
Thankfully, the growth of BJJ opened up many doors, and it was in the United Arab Emirates that the seeds of professional BJJ are being sown. Carlos Santos, under the patronage of H. H. Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan, started to teach the military forces of that country. With time, Carlos started teaching school kids and launched a program that now is in its third phase, reaching 20 thousand school kids from Abu Dhabi and employing 81 Brazilian BJJ coaches.
Not settling for less than excellence, Carlos envisioned a better future for our sport. He started small, promoting local and regional BJJ comps but always with increasing money prizes. The next step was to create a World Pro BJJ Cup, which happened earlier this year. Now the whole thing is expanding with full support of the government and many trials will be done all over the World, qualifying athletes that will receive all travel expenses to compete next April in Abu Dhabi. The II World BJJ Pro Cup will split over Us$ 130,000.00 (One Hundred, Thirty Thousand American Dollars) among the finalists and will mark the establishment of the FIJJA, a federation committed to promote BJJ all over the World in a professional way.
Trials will be run in North, Central and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania, setting the standards for a future World Professional BJJ Tour.
This initiative will cement the future of the sport, bringing a new generation and keeping athletes that were leaving BJJ behind to venture into MMA due to financial pressures.
Our club became responsible for the African Trials, that will happen on 6th of December in Johannesburg, South Africa. Other trials will happen from November to March al over the World and as soon as we have all details available, we will post them here.
The Kombat League is one of the leading organisations of Kickboxing, Low Kick and Thai Boxing in Italy, with amateur, semi-pro and professional competitions.
A few years ago I was in a meeting in Modena where they decided to start doing BJJ and Grappling tournaments. They so far realised the International Montana BJJ Cup in Modena two years in a row, with good money prizes for black belts, as well as other smaller comps.
As part of a major martial arts event realised last weekend in the famous Rimini, they held also a BJJ tournament on Sunday, 3rd of May. The BJJ comp was small compared to the other martial arts traditionally promoted by the KL, but our team was represented there by 3 fighters from Bologna.
Gianluca, Ion and Pier after the comp.
Gianluca Boni and Pierandrea Petazzi both made to the finals, losing their last challenge and taking home silver. Ion Condei, on his first year in the blue belt, is doing so well that I think it is just a matter of time to see our Romenian grappler as European BJJ Champion. He once again dominated his division and took gold, submitting his German opponent in the last seconds of the final match, escaping from an omoplata to execute a triangle choke in the same movement.
Our results:
Gianluca Boni – second place u82kg purple belt Ion Condei – first place u88kg blue belt Pierandrea Petazzi – second place u82kg blue belt
On 4th of April, 2009, our associated club Horizon Martial Arts, located in West Seneca, NY, lead by Tim Hartman, held a grappling tournament in gi and no gi in the city of Buffalo.
The tournament was organised with the help of Defensive Arts Training Center from St. Catharine, Canada. The competition was well attended and gave students an opportunity to compete at a smaller venue, rather than some of the larger national tournaments.
Winning and taking home a medal at the end of the event is always nice, but not the first and foremost reason for attending these kinds of events. However, our athletes did very well taking lots of medals, as can be seen from the picture below. Eight gold medals, five silvers and three bronzes, along with two wins in the Absolute divisions, an impressive score!
Huge congratulations for the initiative and the results.
A week ago the city of Ostia hosted the Italian Grappling Nationals, and our team once again did very well, with impressive results. The comp was done on 19th of April, Sunday, organised by the Italian Grappling Federation (FIGR) and supported by FIJLKAM (the Italian Federation of Judo, Wrestling, Karate and Martial Arts).
Our guys came from Ferrara, Bologna, Livorno, Firenze and Sestri Levante to represent the Rio Grappling Club in Ostia.
Our results!
Bernardo Serrini won 4 fights and got first place on the A Class under 84kgs, qualifying to represent Italy on the World Grappling Tournament in Fort Lauderdale, USA, next December.
Alessio de Liberti took second place in the A Class under 74 kgs, winning 3 matches and losing the final on a very disputed match.
Simone Baldi won the B Class under 60 kgs and Mattia Macchelli took the gold under 66 kgs, while Luca Perugino placed third, after losing to Mattia and winning 2 more fights in the repechage.
Check the videos to see our guys competing!
In 17th of May we will have in Livorno, Italy, the first official Rio Grappling Cup ever. This grappling comp will be organised by our association in Italy, using rules similar to BJJ, with adaptations to make them simpler and more suitable to No Gi conditions. They were previously used in the Londinum Grappling Cup, and with time we will fine tune them to apply in all No Gi comps promoted by us. Soon a blog with all info on this comp will be published, and we will post more about it here.
And we have even more exciting news coming from Italy. First it was Alessio de Liberti that competed and won the first leg of the Kombat League Submission in Vigevano, on the 22nd of February. Alessio got gold in the A division under 68 kg. One weekend later, and our team came to Rome where another tournament was held. The Rome BJJ Open Cup happened last sunday, 1st of March.
We had 3 competitors: Alessio de Liberti, Ion Condei e Mattia Machelli, coached by Bernardo Serrini. Ion Condei has won among the blue belts under 88kg, Alessio also took gold under 70kgs, blue belt, and Mattia, white belt, won his first fight but lost in his second match under 70kgs.
Congratulations to our italian students that are doing so well defending our colours, and good luck to them in their next challenge, the Torino BJJ Cup, to happen on the 21st of March.
The Rio Grappling Club was represented by 9 athletes in Lisbon last weekend, 8 italians and 1 brazilian. Our team took 5 medals: 2 golds, 2 silvers and one bronze. Below our results:
Brown Belt Master Medium Heavy (-88kg)
1. Flavio Machado Maia
3. Bernardo Serrini
Purple Master Super Heavy (-100kg)
2. Matteo Calamandrei
Purple Senior 2 Medium Heavy (-88kg)
1. Pasquale Pace
Blue Belt Juvenile Light (-70kg)
2. Valerio Mori Ubaldini
We currently do not have more details or pictures. Congratulations to the whole team!!!
2009 has barely started but our team is keeping busy training and competing. In Poland we sent 5 students to a small tournament on the 10th of January, and came back with one gold and one bronze. Bernardo Serrini and Matteo Calamandrei are leading our italian squad in the Europeans this weekend. Our group will have between 10 and 15 athletes, and by next week we will report on their results.
We added two new links to our blogroll. RGC Bologna has been part of our network since Gianluca visited us in Brasil a few years ago, and RGC Sestri Levante joined us last year and is taking part in the monthly meetings conducted in Firenze (Florence). This training meetings were held once a week in January in order to raise up the level of our competitors in Lisbon, and we are planning to organise them in Poland as well.
Unfortunately we lost the precious contribution to the group of our student Steve Haydock in Surrey, England. Feeling isolated as the only club in England to be part of our network, he decided to join the Carlson Gracie Revolution team which is growing steadily in England and Ireland. Since Rodrigo Medeiros is a great friend of ours and his students in London are committed to the roots of BJJ and to the Carlson Gracie philosophy, we are confident that this will be a good union for them all. We wish the best luck to their plans and we are looking forward to joint-ventures and increased collaborations between our clubs. Steve did a great job while part of our association, and surely he will not be missed as we will keep collaborating with each other whenever it is practical.
And last but not least, lets not forget that in March 7th and 8th in Spain the European trials of the I BJJ World Professional Cup will be held, with the winners getting all expenses paid to fight in Abu Dhabi for the biggest cash prize in BJJ History.
As 2008 approaches its end, people around the World make their wishes for the starting year, and we are not exception. First we thank all our students all over the World for the great support in 2008, and congratulate them for the growth and excellent results in competitions, and praise our italian team.
Under the leadership of Bernardo Serrini and a strong group mentality, Italy has performed way above average, and they developed simple things we hope to see in all our clubs worldwide for 2009, like monthly meetings and a strong commitment to bring people together.
Enough said, lets make the Rio Grappling Club wishlist (the order is aleatory)!
1. To grow organically next year, with more students joining each one of our clubs and increase the size of our family;
2. To inprove our participation in BJJ and Grappling events worldwide, with even better results than in 2008;
3. To expand our presence in South Africa, and bring together to train with us, there and everywhere, people from different cultures, races and creeds, promoting integration, peace and understanding;
4. To see all our students sharing more information over the internet, and even travelling to other countries to train together;
5. To keep the mission of taking BJJ to the four corners of the World, travelling also to the Middle East, Eastern Europe and different parts of Asia;
6. To keep working hard at our HQ in Wroclaw, Poland, receiving World Class teachers for seminars and our students to train with us, bring up the technical level and unite the students socially as a group;
7. To improve communications between all our schools and clubs, promote our Facebook group and make better use of our blog;
8. To help organise the sport in Europe, supporting tournaments like The Catalunya Cup and do our owns in Poland and Italy with high standards and money prizes;
9. To promote Grappling as a way to achieve better health, and integration between body, mind and soul;
10. Above all, to see a World with less suffering, less inequality, less exploitation, less wars and financial greed, and more dialogue and understanding between people and nations (we do not breath only martial arts, after all)
Last but not least, we wish that everyone in 2009 become a better person than in 2008, using the martial arts as a way to achieve self control, self understanding and a better comprehension of the nature, trying to avoid conflicts and destructive attitudes.
We are facing a huge financial crisis, and in fact is a great opportunity for us all to understand that the most important aspects of our life are not related to money or material comfort. After all, we are only tourists in this beautiful blue planet, and our goals are not to hoard cash, but to live, to love, to learn and to leave a good legacy. Lets not forget that, and try to find happiness in ourselves, in our family, in our friends and in the things that money cannot buy.
A Healthy 2009 for us all!
Last Sunday in Modena, Italy, our team took part in the Grappling Championships, in a small number (3 persons). However, 2 of them took gold. Pier won two matches while Erik fought 4 times (always submitting by armbar) to get the first place. Congratulation to them and to their coaches Gianluca Boni and Matteo Menna.
Our results:
Pierandrea Petazzi – first place -78kg B class
Erik Aalto – first place -68kg C class
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.
Facebook has been growing stronger than Myspace and others, due to a better and simpler interface, and a few months ago we decided to join it and start a group to share information, pictures, videos and discuss things important matters to us. Now we are adding videos of techniques, and invite our readers to join it and participate.
One must first join Facebook and add our group.
Our students Krystian Kwiecień (Silesia) and Jakub Kubiszewski (Wroclaw) were promoted this month. Krys became a brown belt in Raciborz two weeks ago, and since last Wednesday Kuba is the newest purple belt in Wroclaw.
With a higher belt comes always a bigger responsability, as more will expected and demanded from you. The brown belt is the last step before the black, so the expectations are even bigger.
Krystian is more than ready for it. He started BJJ in Raciborz in 2002, later moved to London and trained extensively at our club since early 2004. Back to his home country, he has graded on Sports Science, competed and won BJJ, Submission and Amateur Shooto matches, started clubs in Zawiercie, Lubliniec and Czestochowa, besides teaching sports to kids at his home town’s school and becoming a father of young Kasjan. His help was fundamental to establish our base in Silesia, not to mention that was him that first brought me to Poland to teach BJJ.
Bardzo pracowity as we say in polish language
Kuba finds time to train even though he is graduating in engineering, working as a doormen and going to London every summer to work. His responsability comes also from his surname (Juscelino Kubichek, JK, was one of the best presidents Brasil had, building Brasilia, our capital city, on the late 1950’s). Our own JK will sure help build our club stronger with his good technique and friendly manners.
Wielkie Gratulacje (Huge Congratulations) to them both!
As part of my visit to RGC Italia, this weekend I went to Firenze and Ferrara to teach seminars, and as usual, the classes covered specific topics. Saturday was time for the Firenze BJJ’ers to get more familiar with guard passes. I started defining important concepts on posture and fundamentals of opening the guard, and afterwards we worked on stand-up passes, from the most basic to more advanced ones. We had 22 people coming from Firenze, Bologna, Perugia, Cesena and La Spezia. In the end everyone sparred working on guard passes and defense.
On Sunday in Ferrara, the topic was sweeps when our opponent stands up. We worked closed and open guard sweeps, and in the end I trained with all of our students before grading some of them.
Matteo Tugnolli received his blue belt after his stunning performance in Modena (see post Montana International JJ Cup) and Matteo Mena got his second stripe on the blue belt. Stripes on the white belt were awarded to Ion Condei, Cristian Gessi, Simoni, Vlad and Enrico, signaling to them they are too very close to change belts.
Belo Horizonte, the capital city of Minas Gerais, one of the richest states of Brasil, is also known in the Jiu Jitsu world for being the hometown of the Draculino Team, one of the strongest BJJ and Submission squads, with affiliated schools in the US, Poland and Greece among other countries.
Last Saturday, one of his black belts, Peposo, organised a very professional tournament of Submission Grappling, The 1st Champion League, with money prizes that attracted big names.
Our only student there, Luiz Eduardo Rosa Jr., did very well winning 4 combats in the Elite Division under 70 kgs to win the comp. Dentinho, brown belt in BJJ, participated in one of the most difficult classes and submitted two of his opponents, winning the 2 other fights with many points ahead of his adversaries.
Luiz arrived in Belo Horizonte a week before, and was welcomed at Draculino team where he trained with Marcello Uirapuru and the whole squad to prepare better for the challenge.
He arrived at the finals and closed the bracket with one student of Draculino, Caloquinha. They then shared the money prize of R$500.00 (almost 200 Euros).
Dentinho trains under Marco Chuck at our clubs in Buzios and Cabo Frio. He has been one of the most active of our members in competitions, winning most of the tournaments he entered in the last 2 years, with or without GI.
His focus now is on the Rio de Janeiro State BJJ Championships this month, the international tournaments of July and August in Brasil, and later a trip to Poland where he will help us with the classes in Wroclaw and train at our HQ, aiming for the Europeans next January.
Since I arrived in Livorno last week, I am taking the classes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Yesterday the class was busier than usual, with 4 of our guys from Ferrara and Bologna, and the visit of 3 friends from Massa Carrara. Carrara is famous worldwide for its marble, but BJJ is picking up there too. In the class I taught 2 sweeps and later we drilled guard passing and defending.
Our club in Livorno is located inside the Popeye Club, owned by Riccardo Niccolini, a great freestyle wrestling coach that was placed 5th at the Olympic Games in Moscow 1980, before having a car accident that tore his leg muscles and prevented him from competing.
His passion for the sport, however, never faded, soon he started doing arm wrestling and won many titles including the World Championships. Later he was in the famous movie “Over the Top”, starred by Sylvester Stallone. Now he coaches one of the best freestyle wrestling teams in Italy and owns the Popeye Club. At his gym one can train Freestyle Wrestling, Boxing, Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Arm Wrestling and Olympic Weight Lifting.
Modena, Italy. This Sunday, 30th of March, had one of the first BJJ tournaments in Europe organised with the help of the CBJJE. This new federation has demonstrated to be a partner of the athletes, rewarding their hard effort with money prizes and well structured competitions. This tournament was not different, and had the participation of Wendell Alexander, head coach of Nova Uniao and one of the responsibles for the CBJJE. Each of the 5 black belt divisions gave 500 euros to its winner. The fee was only 30 euros, compare it to the European Championships, that charges 80 euros and gives nothing but medals and t-shirts!
Our team had 13 people coming from La Spezia, Livorno, Ferrara and Bologna. It was my first time watching them fight, and everyone did so well, even the ones losing displayed good technique, fighting spirit, tenacity and respect for their opponents, making me very proud of them.
We made 3 champions and 2 third places, in a competition with over 160 people from many clubs from Italy, France, Switzerland and Poland. A special mention goes to my friend Yan Cabral, that won his fight scoring 20 points on his opponent, at the black belt class under 80 kgs.
Our results:
Matteo Tugnolli – Gold, white belt, -65 kgs
Ion Condei – Gold, white belt, -88kgs
Wolodymyr Katerynchyk – Gold, white belt, +88kgs
Cristian Gessi – 3rd place, white belt, -88kgs
Gianluca Boni – 3rd place, blue belt, -80kgs
Me, Wendell Alexander and Yan Cabral Young Matteo Tugnolli passing guard RGC Italia
Check this quick video showing Daniel Niemeyer receiving his black belt from his teacher Robinson Machado at our club in Cabo Frio, RJ, two weeks ago. Congratulations Dan, and keep it up!
Xmas is coming and so is 2008. A new year arrives and is time to reflect on the past year, check our goals, fix the route if needed and keep forward. Is also time for gradings in Brasil, and this year we have a new black belt in our ranks. Congratulations to Daniel Niemeyer, from Cabo Frio. He received his belt from Robinson Machado, in the first ceremony to be held in our new gym (same location, new dojo).
Marco Chuck (RGC Buzios) will be holding his own ceremony this friday and I was hinted that Luiz Eduardo Rosa Junior will receive the brown belt. Luiz, aka Dentinho, won recently two medals on the purple belt in Teresopolis, a gold in the light open and a bronze in the middle weight, at the Pan American (CBJJE). This month he travelled to Sta. Catarina and took the silver medal in the South American (CBJJ), this time in the light weight. Watch one of his fights below.
Gradings were also held in South Africa, Italy and Cyprus. Igor presented Panicos Aravis his well deserved purple belt, and I promoted Bernardo Serrini (Italy) and Chris Bright (S. Africa) to the brown belt, as well as Liam, Sergio, Bradley, Dennis and Ryan from Johannesburg to the purple belt. All those changes can be noticed on the page About Us, that keeps the records of our official gradings worldwide.
Mauro Chueng is keeping busy in Portugal. He is helping the Dynamite Team (Muay Thai) from Algarve, improving their ground game and coaching their athletes that will fight MMA. Mauro has a solid No Gi experience and trained extensively with Pequeno back in Brasil, besides being one of the most creative fighters I have ever seen in Jiu Jitsu, so I expect some of those guys to be kicking ass soon.
I acted as a referee in the I Catalunya Vulkan BJJ Cup. I noticed that our sport is growing in Spain and had the opportunity to meet good teachers from the new generation that are bringing the art to a higher level in the old continent.
Among them, Yan Cabral and Paulo Sergio in France, Leonardo Pelucio in Tarragona, Augusto Frota and Anderson Pereira in Switzerland, as well as my friends Rafael Haubert (Barcelona) and Edson Sururu (Marbella) showed through their athletes that BJJ is improving fast in Europe. So Merry Xmas and put up your resolutions for 2008, among them do not forget to train more, rest well and eat properly, to keep healthy and fit to fight!
This last 3 weeks have been busier than ever. Our roosterweight champion Igor Rodrigues has arrived in Cyprus and will stay 2 months teaching there. We spoke after his arrival and he is very optimistic with the growing of the sport in that beautiful island. As for myself, I left Poland after visiting our clubs, going to Lublin, Bydgoszcz, Raciborz, Zawiercie and Gliwice before facing a marathon of flights. I flew to Malmo, Sweden and catched a train to Denmark on the 5th of November.
My friend JP, head coach of the Choke Academy, invited me for a weekend and we did a workshop together. Class was nicely packed and some of his students came from all corners of that country. The next Monday was time to catch another flight to Athens, where I gave BJJ and No Gi classes for the whole week. Kristos and Aris, students of Vinicius Draculino, have a new gym with a huge matted area and a nicely built cage.
It was my 4th time in Greece and although the weather wasn’t that good, I had great time and noticed that the commitment of the Athenians is bearing fruits, their students have improved a lot. Purple belt Dimitris, that was with me in Brasil a year ago, is competing everywhere and recently won weight and open divisions in a London comp, submitting his opponents in 5 of his 6 matches. He is going to the Hungarian Open and I won’t be surprised if he does it again.
While I was in Greece, I received great news from California and Italy, where our guys competed again and brought some medals. I will write another post with all the results later today.
My last weekend was hectic with 4 flights and many connections, from Athens I flew to Spain, going through Milano, Barcelona and Malaga before arriving in Sevilla on Saturday. No time to rest there, I had a seminar Sunday to my friends Andre and Alberto and their students. BJJ is still little in this part of Spain but this little group is so enthusiastic that this is going to change very soon. On the same day, I took a train to Madrid and flew out of Europa to arrive in South Africa the next morning, very tired but relieved that the marathon was over and everything went well.
I will stay in South Africa for 3 weeks more and soon will post here sharing my experience in this amazing country. Stay tuned!
Already running for five years uninterrupted, the Polish Nationals happen in different places, always in November. This year it was Kozmin Wp. the town chosen. There was sensible improvement from last years competition. This time medals were specially made, I was impressed with the quality. The comp had two days so the times were respected, but occasionally they did not manage to use well the four areas, making some competitors wait too long between fights.
Posted by atalla 
Posted by atalla 
Posted by atalla 
