Roberto Tussa (Gracie Barra) managed to take gold once again this year at the No-Gi World Championship, becoming the first two-time champion of the heavyweight division. Tussa, in the final, beat Bruno Bastos (Nova Uniao) by 2 to 0 (takedown).
“I’d been keeping up with Bruno Bastos. He’s a very strategic fighter. I studied his fights. He fought a friend of mine, Alexandre Dante, and it was 2 to 2 and he managed an armbar at the very end. I also knew he was good at flying armbars, so I already knew who I would fight against. I’d never faced him, but I had an idea. In my opinion he’s a guy who doesn’t risk much, so [in the final] I practically just played his game and we just traded grips. At about two minutes he messed up with an armdrag, but ended up going out of the ring and I gained an advantage. Then he tried another armdrag and left the ring again, so I ended up getting two points. When I had 2 points and an advantage, I started administering the fight. I’ll say I didn’t stall, because I don’t like stalling, but I was trying for takedowns and he wasn’t taking any risks, so I didn’t take any risks either. I ended up using his game to beat him,” confirmed Roberto Tussa.
Tussa tried for the absolute, but didn’t get it, stopping in the semifinal to Antonio Braga Neto (Ralph Gracie), the standout of the championship for winning the absolute. Tussa took third, as he did in 2007. “We fought really well and at 6 or 7 minutes he took my back and scored 6 points. Then he managed to put in the hooks and scored another 4, so he ended up beating me. I took third, but it was a learning and growing experience. The next day I competed with my head in the right place and scored 21 points and got the finish with a triangle,” said Tussa, who intends to return to training at full blast with the objective of competing at the No-Gi Pan-American, to take place in the first week of October, in New York.
