Various Pictures

ZT Fight Skool BJJ Competition

Yesterday was the first ever BJJ competition held by Ivam Maciel of ZT fight skool in Brighton! It was a really smoothly run event, with all competitors having their own name tag displayed on a huge white board which were moved around depending who they had to fight next. It was a really good system and made it so much easier to find out what was going on! While the original categories were only above 77kg and below 77kg, so many competitors signed up they had to add categories for under 88kg, under 98kg and over 98kg!

The morning of the Sunday saw a bunch of guys from BTT Eastbourne meeting up and making our way down to Brighton. As usual, I had just enough time to weigh in, stretch for 15 minutes, and then it was time for the light weight division. I had three fights, finishing two of them with a north/ south choke and winning one on points, before coming up against my team mate Adam ( Gym Sparta) who beat me on points! After helping everyone else with their fights and coaching a few of the guys who were competing for the first time it was time for the absolute. This also went well, seeing me beat two guys with the north/ south choke again before loosing to a 130kg judo black belt who went on to win the whole thing! I was happy with how I did on the day considering I haven't had time to train as much as I would have liked, due to having so much work to do for university.

Overall Team BTT Eastbourne took gold (Adam Urbanski), silver (Steve Stone) and bronze (me) in the lightweight, gold in the light heavyweight (Peter Kuapil) as well as silver (Pete again) and bronze (me again) in the absolute. For a small town team we did really well and I think its a great demonstration that Team Eastbourne will definitely be a force to be reckoned with in the near future!

It was a really well organised competition and a really great local tournament to help guys with their first competition jitters. The British BJJ Open is coming up in June so its going to be time to step up the training again! Hopefully I will be done with unviersity in the next week or so and then I can focus on BJJ 100% again!

Ze Marcello seminar Eastbourne

Last week we had a very informative seminar by Ze Marcello, who came down from the Slough Academy to teach at the Canton gym. I am used to seeing around a maximum of 20 people on the mats at Canton, so having 32 participants running around and doing breakfalls was quite shocking, but fun.



During the seminar Ze went over the half guard game, focusing specifically on sweeps. I think we went over around 3 sweeps, each with an additional counter move in case the opponent blocked the original one. Unfortunately I only managed to record the last two, but these are more than enough to keep me busy for a while! Its nice to have a bit more half guard in my arsenal as half guard is usually just a transition position for me. We rolled for around 45 minutes at the end of the seminar and I was lucky enough to go with a black belt from Barcelona who came along with Ze. Here are some photos from the day:

ZT fight skool competition

New competition coming up on the 10th of May! Its going to be held at the ZT fight skool in Brighton by Ivam Maciel and should be another great tournament - check out the ZT website for more information. I think the entry is limited to Ivam's students and his student's students but I am not too sure.

Brighton Grab and Pull videos 2

Few more videos. One is the end of my thrid fight and the other is an incomplete video of one of the absolute fights.

Brighton Grab and Pull videos

While I had 10 fights between my weight devision and the absolute devision, we only managed to film a few of them. The first few minutes of most of the fights are a bit boring - feel free to skip ahead! Here are a couple below:

Brighton Grab and Pull Competition

Last weekend was the Brighton Grab and Pull competition! It was a great tournament which was run very smoothly and on time. Although there was only 10 of us from Brazilian Top Team competing, we walked away with 5 gold medals, 2 silver and 3 bronze out of a total of around 250 competitiors! Well done guys! I was much less nervous than the last competition and had a good game plan to work with. I made it to the finals of the light weight devision (5 fights) and then unfortunately lost by referee decision... there had been no points or advantages scored. I was pissed off, but i guess it could have gone either way, although I would have liked the fight to have gone into extra time. In the absolute devision there were some big guys, but I managed to make it to the finals after another 5 rounds. However, as it was me and another member of BTT in the finals (team members dont fight each other at our club)we drew and both got gold.


Rach won the girls devision, continuing her winning streak from the Bristol Open! Well done Rach! It was great day and was the ultimate reward for all the training between now and the last competition. I am off to Bharain for a two week holiday, where I should get a few training sessions in at Team Reza's academy. However, right now all I am interested in is eating lots of good food and relaxing for a few days. Videos and pics to follow