The leader of Gracie Barra Santa Maria, in Brasilia, Marcio Lima shone in the absolute of the Fortaleza Open, held last weekend. The undersized fighter was faced with two big opponents, and his secret for reaching the top was to invest in variations and confounding the competition.
“My first opponent weighed 125kg,” he told Graciemag. “It would be complicated to pull him to half-guard, my strong position. If I call him immediately to my half, he’s gonna squash me too much, and I’d need too much force to sweep. Hence the plan was to seek the deep half-guard right away. Then I changed to the X-guard and used the hook to come up. I applied three variations in the same movement to avoid the pressure coming from the top.
“In the second fight, which was the absolute final, my opponent in the blue gi defended well against my sweep variations. I used three of them in this situation as well. In the end I used the lapel as an option to come up, and it worked.”
Watch the following video to see the two fights by the brave Marcio Lima.