Isaque Bahiense. IBJJF.
Twenty-one-year-old Isaque Bahiense, one of the stars of the new generation of BJJ, promises to make noise in the 2017 World Championship, scheduled to begin May 31st in Calif. This will be his first edition fighting as a black-belt, and he is excited to try and take the middleweight title.
“You can expect an Isaque who makes fewer mistakes,” says the 2016 brown-belt world champion. “I’ve been a black-belt for four months and have a total ten championships and 47 fights. I have learned a lot and am finding my mistakes. I will arrive very well at the Worlds and I have good people helping me do that. I will do intense preparation at Alliance São Paulo — it’s lions everywhere. For my part, I have increased the number of drills to get there sharp.
“My head is good. I’ve been working toward this dream for ten years. It’s time, right? I want to become the next heir of the middleweight. Experience and technique count a lot at the black belt; at the other belts you can win on just vigor alone.”
In order to stay active, Isaque has been competing in the biggest tournaments for the last five months. Last weekend he won the Marianas Open’s Lightweight GP, ahead of Renato Canuto, Michael Liera Jr. and Johnny Tamma. “I know I had a great performance,” he says, “but in the end I wound up learning a lot from the whole process. I was coming off of a loss at the World Pro, and it was a moment of reflexions. However, the work was done, and I did good fights against tough athletes. I learned a lot from these last two events. I can barely wait to fight at the Worlds.”
[Based on a press release.]
