Bernardo Faria vs. Luiz Panza
Osvaldo Moizinho, Vitor Oliveira, Keenan Cornelius and Bernardo Faria are the 2014 BJJ Pro League champions.
In the featherweight division, Osvaldo Moizinho first had a great showing against Ivaniel Oliveira.
After taking Oliveira’s back, he went for the lapel and got the choke to advance to the final.
His opponent would be Paulo Miyao, who didn’t get the submission, but put his berimbolo to work to defeat Koji Shibamoto 14-2.
The final match was a nervous one and decided in the last seconds.
After a exchange of sweeps and sweep attempts, Moizinho got a last-second inversion to tie the score 8(3)-8(3).
The win came in the way of unanimous decision by the three referees in favor of Moizinho.
In the middleweight division, a unexpected result right in the first match.
Two-time world champion Otavio Sousa was surprised by Francisco Iturralde’s strategy of pulling guard first and ended up being swept with only one minute left in the clock.
Sousa put his efficient guard game to work and managed a sweep, but time ran out before he could stabilize the position, costing him a 2-0 defeat.
In the other semifinal, Vitor Oliveira had a tough match with Claudio Calasans Jr and won 2-1 on advantages with two near guard passes.
The final was similar to Iturralde’s first match and the Ecuadorian pulled guard and managed a sweep to go ahead in the scoreboard.
Vitor battled from the bottom and in the last moments was able to come on top and get the mount to turn the score to 4-2 for the trophy.
In the heavyweight division, Keenan Cornelius was all about business.
The American black belt was not seen in the World Jiu-Jitsu Expo all weekend and appeared only to compete in the BJJ Pro League.
The first semifinal involved Jackson Sousa and Yuri Simões replacement, Eduardo Telles.
Sousa battled Telles’ famous turtle guard and won 4-1 on advantages after a 2-2 tie in points.
Cornelius had his first match against Roberto Alencar and was able to impose his game to win 12-0.
The final put old rivals face to face again and was decided by details.
Keenan used his notorious worm guard but couldn’t get ahead on the scoreboard.
In the end, two out of three referees decided that Keenan was the winner.
The Checkmat crowd complained that Cornelius should have been punished for an ilegal grip to Sousa’s pants.
In the ultraheavy division, Bernardo Faria put his A game to work and debuted with a triangle choke against Gustavo Pires.
In the other semifinal, Luiz Panza started out working his guard against Ricardo Evangelista and winning by armbar.
The final was a rematch of the 2014 Pan, when Panza was able to finish Faria with an armbar.
Faria gave no second chance to Panza’s dangerous game and choked from the back for the gold medal.
Here are the best images of the event:
