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IBJJF Brasileiro 2023 comes to an end
The 2023 edition of the IBJJF Brazilian National Championship (commonly referred to as Brasileiro) has come to an end and after hundreds of Jiu-Jitsu matches over the course of a week, a new group of champions have been crowned. Tainan Dalpra made his first trip to the tournament since being promoted to black belt and left with a gold medal in the middleweight division, bringing him three-quarters of the way through his IBJJF grand slam this year with just the world championship left.
The highest honours went to Victor Hugo though, as he won gold medals in both the ultra-heavyweight and the absolute division. Meanwhile, Gabrieli Pessanha achieved the same feat and won two gold medals in the women’s divisions, continuing her perfect year and bringing her within touching distance of making history. If she does the same at the world championship later this year then she will become the only competitor to ever achieve a weightclass and absolute division grand slam twice.
Full results for the event can be found here.
Unique ruleset produces excitement at Kairos Pro Jiu-Jitsu 1
Kairos Pro Jiu-Jitsu put on their very first event last weekend and they introduced the world to their unique and interesting ruleset. The tournament featured ten top female grapplers who competed in two five-person round-robin groups, before the winners of each group met in the final. What made the event truly unique though is the fact that this was both a gi and no gi tournament, with the ruleset for each individual match being decided by a coin-flip.
This meant that each of the ten women competing had to be confident in their skills in both rulesets, and that their gameplan would need to adapt at a moment’s notice. Vanessa English put on an almost-flawless performance to win the first group, while Gabi Schuck and Selma Vik had a close contest to win the second. In the end it was Schuck who won the division and met English in the final, but English remained undefeated and won that match by a close decision.
Full results for the event can be found here.
Mass exodus sees 8 competitors leave Dream Art
Dream Art has just lost a pretty big chunk of their competition team, as eight top grapplers have left their ranks to join Fratres Jiu-Jitsu instead. There doesn’t appear to be any bad blood between the athletes who’ve left and the coaches remaining at Dream Art, but it’s still a sizeable loss regardless. Half of the competitors leaving are all from the same family as talented grapplers Alex, Anderson, and Erich Munis have left along with their younger brother Dione.
Top ultra-heavyweight contender Yatan Bueno has left along with them, as has the reigning IBJJF featherweight world champion Meyram Maquine. The final two people who’ve parted ways with Dream Art are IBJJF Pan champion Yara Soares and one of the most exciting female brown belt prospects in the sport right now; Giovanna Jara. Fratres Jiu-Jitsu have already had a great competition team with the likes of Natan Chueng and Rider Zuchi, but now they’ve just become even stronger.
Leandro Lo to be posthumously inducted into IBJJF Hall of Fame
The IBJJF have just announced that Leandro Lo was going to be posthumously inducted into their Hall of Fame at a ceremony that will be held during the world championship later this year. They made the announcement on what would have been Lo’s 34th birthday, but he was sadly shot and killed late last year. Regardless of that, Lo has been practically guaranteed a place in the IBJJF Hall of Fame for several years now anyway.
He became the first person in history to win the IBJJF world championship in 5 different weightclasses back in 2019, and he even won a silver medal in a 6th weightclass too. He won several other major IBJJF titles throughout his career and was still winning world championships until just two months before his death. Lo was a popular figure and a beloved personality, and it’s fitting that he receives this honour during the first world championship without him since 2011.
Quick Hits
- Multiple-time IBJJF world champion Mayssa Bastos has just announced her decision to change teams to Art of Jiu-Jitsu, under the Mendes brothers.
- Former UFC world champion Rose Namajunas has signed up to the ADCC Denver Open to test her grappling skills against elite competitors.
- Mark Zuckerberg entered a local BJJ competition as a white belt and came away with both a silver and a gold medal from his division.
- Young Art of Jiu-Jitsu star Jessa Khan represented her home-country of Cambodia at the Southeast Asian Games and came away with a gold and silver medal.
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Kimura to Tarikoplata
Meme of the Week
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