Gurgel carries Cobrinha in one of Alliance's many celebrations at the Worlds / Ivan Trindade
Fabio
Gurgel is already back in Sao Paulo after a long journey to win the
2009 World Championship, in Long Beach. “I just stepped in at home,
thank God,” said the black belt leader of Alliance to GRACIEMAG.com.
Alliance
conquered its second team title in a row beating its own scoring record
(last year it tallied 117 and in 2009 121), Cobrinha was crowned
four-time featherweight champion, Langhi captured his first, Bruno
Malfacine “put an end to the featherweight curse,” Marcelo Garcia did
well in his return to gi competition closing out with Sergio Moraes…
The results couldn’t have been much better.
In the opinion
of Gurgel, however, they could have. In the following interview
GRACIEMAG.com readers will see how the general didn’t hide his sadness
for Lucas Lepri’s loss to Gilbert Durinho and Tarsis Humphrey’s defeat
at the hands of Romulo Barral.
GRACIEMAG.com: What’s your assessment of Alliance’s performance this Worlds?
Fabio Gurgel:
Hard to say. We had a close to perfect championship. I think not
everyone’s going to win all the time and we didn’t expect that. But I
think we went in with a strong team with a great chance of winning
again. We trained a lot for it. We’ve been training and doing physical
conditioning work since last Worlds, because making it is one thing,
maintaining it is another. I had to build the athletes’ consciousness,
make everyone train a lot and keep up a good competition rhythm. To
answer your question, I think our disappointment had to do with Lucan
Lepri, who was a firm favorite to win, and ended up losing a match we
didn’t expect him to. But everyone else lived up to expectations. It
was a nearly perfect championship.
GM: How does the team feel having conquered its second?
FG: Marvelous.
It’s recognition of the arduous work everyone’s been doing, the team’s
dedication, the organization, folks believing more and more in the work
we’re doing, everyone participating. I think Alliance is a model of
good organization. Of course there’s no formula. Truth is we have a
formula that works for us but might not for other teams. We broke our
own record, managed to keep in ahead with a good lead in points.
GM:
Last year Alliance scored 117 points and second place scored 66. This
year you went up to 121 and Gracie Barra scored 88. What are your
thoughts on those results?
FG: I think
Alliance and Gracie Barra are the most organized academies doing the
most global work, that’s why they end up standing out more than the
others. Since the beginning we’ve known it would be a tight dispute.
GM: What is responsible for the increase in points?
FG: 117 to 121
is real close. But we did our job just like last year, the difference
being that in 2008 we went in with the motivation of conquering the
title we hadn’t won in 10 years, and this year we came in as favorites.
Alliance is the only team to make it to the winners’ stand in all the
main championships. I like to joke that we’re used to playing away from
home, because we don’t have championships where we have our main gyms.
There aren’t any in Sao Paulo, nor in Atlanta. So we travel to Rio to
compete at the Brazilian Nationals, we travel to Europe, the USA. We’re
always traveling, but we manage to get on the winners’ stand at all of
them.
GM: Is any athlete particularly happy about their performance?
FG: It’s hard
to speak for the athlete, but I think they all did well. But two people
didn’t yet have the title and deserved to, and they were Michael Langhi
and Bruno Malfacine. I think Michael, to tell you the truth, is now
Jiu-Jitsu’s athlete of the year. He fought in everything in gi
competition this year and won all the main titles. Another is Tarsis
Humphreys, who had a match with Romulo Barral that I feel he won, from
the zero to zero score there’s no way you can call Barral the champion,
so it was a bit hard to swallow that silver medal. But as I said: you
can’t win them all. To illustrate how things are. Vella beat Braulio in
the same position Tarsis was in with Barral and the judges gave the
match to Vella in one and Barral in the other. But those things happen
when you have a zero-zero score, we can’t complain.
Sergio and Marcelo celebrating closing out the middleweight category
GM: You
recently told GRACIEMAG.com you would like to see Marcelo Garcia
training in the gi instead of MMA. What do you make of his return?
FG: Marcelo has
always been a reference within Alliance. He’s been with the team since
the split-up; he carried the “boat” on his own till now. He joined the
team already at top level, already strong and everyone had the joy of
seeing him fight. I always took the stance that he should not have
left, but that was his personal decision. And now he’s back and really
motivated, happy to return to competition. We want him to feel at home.
I think he had a marvelous championship and Sergio Moraes did too. We
have a great middleweight duo that’s going to make a lot of noise for
some time.
GM: What are the next steps for the team?
FG: We're going
to take off the gi for a while, as we have ADCC coming up in three
months, so we'll put some emphasis on the ADCC and then the Brazilian
Team championship and keep up the work. Our plan is to get better and
better, stronger and stronger and more organized.
