Rominho Barral in photo by John Lamonica
While Brazilians went to town on the mats at the Rickson Cup in Tokyo, in Kobeanother world champion was at work on opponents’ necks.
“My sponsor, Adidas, was promoting the Kobe International Open, so they called on me to compete in the absolute. It wasn’t a big tournament bit it was really cool. Unfortunately it landed on the same day as the Rickson Gracie Cup; I’d have liked to have been in both of them,” Rômulo Barral told GRACIEMAG.com, elaborating on what it took to win.
“I won the absolute Roger style, submitting everyone from mount. Now I’ll stick around another week to wrap up some seminars,” added the Gracie Barra teacher.
“There’s no way to stop, is there? That’s why it was great to compete here. I was really upset by some of the results I came up with this year, as I didn’t perform well even after training a lot and doing everything just right,” said the 2011 world runner-up who made an abrupt exit from the absolute and later lost in the opening stage of ADCC 2011.
“Here I started warming up for next year. I’m not going to stop competing; I don’t know where that all was coming from! My head really wasn’t in the right place to compete, but you can bet I’ll fix that, though. That’s all in the past, thank God, and next year you’ll see, I’ll be back at full steam,” predicted the submission whiz.
While we’re at it, take the chance to learn some of his guard tricks in the video below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i_hQTCE6eg
