Videos from Livorno I

Recent and historical. Images from the I Rio Grappling Cup in Livorno three weeks ago, and a sequence of freestyle matches from 1979!

Watch below the final match under 66kgs between Matteo Menna and Thier Tavares; under 84kgs between myself and Tommaso Pispico, and highlights from our wrestling coach Riccardo Nicolini, fighting freestyle 30 years ago, on his way to the Olympic Games in Moscow, where he took 5th place.

The First Rio Grappling Cup!

Livorno, where the Rio Grappling Club started in Italy 5 years ago, hosted the first Grappling Cup organised by our association yesterday, Sunday 17th of May.

Teaming up with the Italian Federation of Grappling, we offered 500 Euro in cash, divided by the 5 winners of the Class A. Official matted areas, electronic scoreboards and referees were sent by the FIGR/FIJLKAM, and we took care of setting up everything and let the fighters do the show. About 80 grapplers from all over Italy came to the comp.

We adopted the official FILA rules. Although not without flaws, those rules are a lot better than the ones used in ADCC Sub Wrestling tournaments. This, far from being only my voice, was what I heard from many competitors, including Luca Anacoreta from Rome, one of the best italian grapplers and winner yesterday (under 74kg class A).

Our team, stronger than ever in Italy, did well winning or qualifying in most divisions, with amazing performances by Matteo Menna, Simone Baldi and Erik Tornaboni among others. I decided to compete at the last minute as there were no one from our team under 84kgs.

Even weighing around 79kgs, I took the chance of fighting without training specifically for it or preparing psichologically, and thankfully managed to overcome my 2 opponents, winning both matches by submission. After two years and a half without competing, I was pleased to return to the mats, although I felt the rust and did not perform as well as I wanted, but in the end what matters is to win without doubts. My first match was ended with a rear naked choke and the finals with an armbar. Soon I will upload videos and a slideshow of the tournament.

Class A results:

Under 66kgs
1. Matteo Menna – RGC Ferrara
2. Thier Tavares – Ass. Aranha
3. Mattia Macchelli – RGC Firenze

Under 74 kgs:
1. Luca Anacoreta – Rogerio Olegario
2. Ciro Ruotolo – Nova Invicta
3. Andrea Lavaggi – RGC Sestri Levante

Under 84kgs:
1. Roberto Atalla – RGC
2. Tommaso Pispico – GB Italy
3. Daniel Gianpaolo – GB Italy

Under 96kgs:
1. Erik Tornaboni - RGC La Spezzia
2. Gianluca Palombi – A.S Pegaso Ladispoli
3. Sela Sokol – IC Perugia

Under 120kgs:
1. Matteo Calamandrei – RGC Firenze
2. Vito Rea – Galaktik Sora

Class B results:

Under 60kgs:
1. Simone Baldi – RGC Ferrara
2. Filippo Fioretto – IC Team Centurion
3. Andrea Matzuzzi – Le Rughe Grappling Clan

Under 66kgs:
1. Michele Baldassarri – Sakura Judo
2. Omar Sterni – Yoseikan Morini

Under 74kgs:
1. Giacomo Landi – Aranha JJ
2. Johnny Cecchini – Rendoki Dojo
3. Franco Benassi IC JJ center PR

Under 84kgs:
1. Stefano Di Donna – Sakura Judo
2. Marco Longo – RGC Firenze
3. Riccardo Pelosi – Aranha JJ

Under 96kgs:
1. Alberto Prandi – Le Rughe Grappling Clan
2. Michele Bovo – Padovar JJ

Under 120kgs:
1. Luca Renga – Sakura Judo
2. Fabricio Carvalho De Souza – Nova Uniao

My encounter with Master Helio

As promised, I am reposting the video I have when I met Helio Gracie last year. Lets remember a few things he said.
“Afraid of dying? This is nonsense. People should be afraid of being born”
“I don’t know if you believe in reincarnation, but we will come back many times over until we do not need it anymore. Until you do not have wrong thoughts, you will return.”

Grappling sessions

This is my last week coaching in Livorno before I fly to Wroclaw in Poland, and we are having great sessions with our local students as well as many visitors.

Wednesday was not different and we had Matteo and Gambe driving from Ferrara, and the brazilian black belt Thier Tavares, who came with his student Davide all the way from Arezzo.

I am pleased to introduce Thier to our guys in Tuscany, as he moved from Brasil 8 months ago and is still adjusting to life in Europe. He is a very humble and down to earth person and very technical, and trained in Rio de Janeiro, the craddle of BJJ.

Tonight is our last class until summer and we expect some of our friends from Firenze to come down, as well as our students from Ferrara.

Next week I will start the classes in Wroclaw and I am really amped because we will introduce No GI and Beginner classes and start weekly focused programs elaborated by myself that will speed up the learning proccess.

This is not a marketing hype, is a new concept on BJJ classes that I developed that can only work inside a group with advanced students and must be carried on for 6 months in order to be really effective. After 15 years of teaching experience, I feel very confortable to say that this will really work.

I do not want to explain too much or else people will be copying that elsewhere. One must come and train with us for a few weeks at least to really grasp what is going on. Anyways, since I have not arrived in Wroclaw yet, I am posting group pictures from my last visit in 2007.

Firenze and Ferrara

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.

December Wrap-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!

Chuck, Fabio, Daniel and Robinson

Mauro Chueng and Florin

Watch Luiz fighting:

Latest news from Europa

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! 

BJJ Seminars this weekend in London

I will teach two BJJ seminars in London this weekend:

West London: Saturday 13th of October @ Carlson Gracie 302 Revolution Team from 2 to 5pm – Half guard reversals and strategies

East London: Sunday 14th of October @ London Fight Factory from 1 to 4pm – Standing guard passes

Discounted prices on fighting shorts, rash guards and Manto t-shirts

For more info please email me: robertoatalla@gmail.com

Steve Haydock gets his black belt

Saturday 6th of October, 2007. It’s three in the afternoon and I leave the train that brought me from London Victoria. Those are familiar grounds to me. I started coming to Caterham in the end of 2003, just a month after arriving in England. At that time he was a very talented blue belt, that won the London Open later in 2004, and already coaching a enthusiastic group of 10 to 15 people with a core group of 5 guys closer to him, plus many kids learning grappling, striking and self defence.

The Applied Fighting Systems joined the Rio Grappling Network and while I lived in London I went there several times, coaching, joining Steve’s classes and training with the crew. After moving out of the country, I keep coming here whenever I am in London, and I can tell from my observations that the group in Surrey is constantly improving its technical quality and the group is growing, with a diversity of people from all ages. The core group now has at least ten people and the classes have sometimes 30 people without counting kids of all ages, keeping the mats full and the atmosphere is bright, everyone motivated to learn and no agressiveness is shown, there is a lot of respect and camaraderie, things I see that are very important no matter what you train or do.

As a leader of this group, Steve has commited himself for a very long time, he has been training and coaching for nine years non stop, putting a lot of time and effort in making this happen.

On a sidenote, this month is the ninth anniversary of me receiving my black belt, and now I awarded my first black belt outside Brasil, after making Steve work through all the students (22) in a progression from white to brown belts. After he was tired, I jumped in his neck

This training was not meant to be a test as I knew already that Steve Haydock was already a black belt, with skills, attributes and knowledge a genuine black belt needs. The idea was to make it a day not to be forgotten, and nothing like a hard workout to remind you how far you have come since the white belt days.

Cheers to everyone present at that day, our guests from Carlson Gracie team, Dave Lucas that came from Switzerland specially to this event and congratulations to Matt Peters, Dave Pawan and Jamil Soroudji that received their purple belts.