But in between, the athletes battled it out with one another all while representing their team. There were many teams large and small present at the tournament but the trophies were only given to the top three.

Because this was a larger tournament, the team points were distributed among the adults, the masters and the females.

The adult male division team trophies went to these teams:

1 – Alliance Marcelo Garcia – 74
2 – Gracie Barra – 49
3 – Team Lloyd Irvin – 43

What brought in the most points were both black belt and brown belt stand-outs from each team.

For the females, Luiza Monteiro and Ana Lowry represented Cicero Costha and the PSLPB team all by themselves. Because they won both weight and absolute at both brown and black, it was enough to earn the first place. The second place was earned by the help of Maia Matalon who topped the podium of the purple belt open class division.

1 – PSLPB Cicero Costha – 36
2 – Fifty/50 Jiu-Jitsu – 18
3 – Bonsai JJ – Chicago – 18

For the master divisions, the team trophies were distributed as follows:

1 – Renzo Gracie – 138
2 – Alliance Marcelo Garcia – 97
3 – Gracie Barra – 74

The older athletes deserve their credit, too!

Check out the full results here: http://static.ibjjfdb.com/Campeonato/000305/en-US/Results.pdf

And check out this photo gallery of the lower belts:

Teams support their students/teammates during a final match. Photo: Erin Herle

The 2014 IBJJF New York Summer Open on Saturday, July 19 brought in the locals and some visitors. The teams present represented the NYC area of schools including some GMA academies: Alliance Marcelo Garcia, Renzo Gracie Academy, Gracie Barra Long Island, Vitor Shaolin Academy, Soca BJJ, Savarese Jiu-Jitsu and more.

The overall team points amounted to these totals:

1 – Alliance Marcelo Garcia – 296
2 – Renzo Gracie – 157
3 – Soca Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu – 100

The Alliance Marcelo Garcia Academy has won the tournament multiple times over the years since its first edition but this was their most tremendous performance thus far.

Multiple photographers captured the day so check out these links to see the galleries:

John “Ric” Ricard and Doug Kline produced photos for the IBJJF here.

Jeff Chu at FighterPlus has his album of photos here.

See the full results of the tournament here.

The 2014 IBJJF New York Summer Open on Saturday, July 19 brought some tough black belts into the Nat Holman Gymnasium on the campus of City College of New York.

The double-gold athlete of the day went to, again, Gianni Grippo of Alliance Marcelo Garcia. Other names like Rodrigo Freitas and Vitor Oliveira were present to show their skills between the big tournaments.

Here are the results of the black belt division finals:

Rooster: David Zennario of Vicente Jr. Team had no other competitors.
Light-feather:  John Cho of Alliance NYC defeated  Sidemar Honorio of Renzo Gracie by 4-2 points.
Feather: Edson Oliveira of Barbosa Equipe defeated Joseph Taliercio of Renzo Gracie.
Light: Gianni Grippo of Alliance Marcelo Garcia defeated Rodrigo Freitas of Gracie Barra by 2 points.
Middle: Vitor Oliveira of GFTeam defeated Fletcher Linton of Maxercise by armbar.
Medium-heavy: Antonio Antonioli of Atos defeated Vinicius Silva of Team Link by armbar.
Heavy: Vitor Toledo of Atos defeated Thomas Johannessen of Frontline Academy by armbar.
Super-heavy: Lincoln Pereira of Renzo Gracie defeated Rodrigo Reis of Tanque Jiu-Jitsu by toehold.
Ultra-heavy: Kenny Brown of Team Lloyd Irvin defeated Tiago Ribeiro of Team Giraffe Academy by ezekiel.

See the photos of matches below:

Here is how the black belt absolute division unfolded:

Thomas Johannessen defeated Tiago Ribeiro by triangle.
Samuel Hertzog defeated David Zennario by armbar.
Steven Barrett defeated Joseph Taliercio by triangle.
Rodrigo Reis defeated Fletcher Linton by ezekiel.
Thomas Johannessen defeated Kenny Brown by 4-0 points.
Rodrigo Freitas defeated Samuel Hertzog by triangle.
Eliot Kelly defeated Rodrigo Reis by 5-0 points.
Gianni Grippo defeated Steven Barrett by cross choke.

Rodrigo Freitas defeated Thomas Johannessen by 3-0 points.
Gianni Grippo defeated Eliot Kelly by 11-2 points.

Gianni Grippo defeated Rodrigo Freitas by referee decision. (1-1 adv., 1-1 pen.)

Check out the full open class in photos:

See full results here.

Inacio Neto at the New York Open earlier this year. Photo: Erin Herle

The next IBJJF championship in New York is the 2014 New York Summer Open on Saturday, July 19. As with every other edition, the athlete list always reaches capacity before the registration deadline is met so register early!

The championship will take place at the traditional venue, the Nat Holman Gymnasium at the City College of New York. It is located at 160 Convent Avenue New York, NY 10031.

Divisions are open for adults and masters, white to black. Already signed up are members of GMA academies ready to defend their turf such as Renzo Gracie, Marcelo Garcia Academy, Vitor Shaolin BJJ Academy, Soca BJJ, Gracie Barra Long Island, Savarese BJJ and more.

You can register now for $110 per person at www.ibjjf.org

The 2014 IBJJF New York Spring Open at the Nat Holman Gymnasium on the City College of New York campus on April 12 unfolded. There were many photographers on location to capture the fights from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., white to black.

The team awards were as follows:

1 Alliance Marcelo Garcia – 193 points

2 Team Lloyd Irvin – 168 points

3 Renzo Gracie – 106 points

Full results can be found here: http://static.ibjjfdb.com/Campeonato/000250/en-US/Results.pdf

Photos from Fighterplus can be found in this album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.803854879632250.1073741857.502531056431302

Rommel Malabanan took photos for GRACIEMAG, which can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/graciemag/sets/72157643948819415/

The IBJJF photographers of the day John “Ric” Ricard and D-Kline Design took photos here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.857595640922436.1073741996.192240324124641 

And another gallery here:

Check out Renan Borges with his top game with Gianni’s guard retention:

Gianni Grippo wins the black belt open weight division at the 2014 IBJJF Boston Spring Open. Photo: Erin Herle

The black belt adult open weight division at the 2014 IBJJF Boston Spring Open held five athletes:

Lightweight Renan Borges of BTT
Lightweight Gianni Grippo of Alliance Marcelo Garcia
Middleweight Vinicius Silva of Team Link
Medium-heavyweight Jarod Lawton of New England United BJJ
Heavyweight Antonio Antonioli of Atos Jiu-Jitsu

Here is how the bracket was organized:

Here is the drawn up bracket for the black belt open weight

The first match was Renan Borges against Vinicius Silva. Renan was able to secure a the back and a bow and arrow choke ensued from there moving him tot he semi-finals.

Antonio Antonioli had a bye and stepped into the semi-final. Renan pulled guard and after Antonio moved towards north south, he did not get around Renan’s inverted guard. Renan came up with an arm drag and earned an advantage since the referee called stop as they went out of bounds. Renan pulled guard again and then was able to secure a sweep off of x-guard and win the match 2-0 points.

The next match was on the other side of the bracket as Gianni Grippo faced Jarod Lawton. Gianni pulled guard and as Jarod attempted to pass Gianni swept. Jarod reciprocated with a sweep of his own. Gianni came up in a leg drag position to earn two points for a sweep and as he went to secure a pass, Jarod was able to stand. Gianni pulled guard once again and swept into 50-50 position and came up on top to earn another two points for the sweep. The match ended as Jarod attempted to attack the feet. The end score was 6-2 and Gianni earned his place in the final.

The final match began with a double-guard pull between Renan and Gianni. They were called for stalling since neither came up on top. Finally Renan sat up to pass and there were more stalling calls for inactivity. Renan tried for various passes with double-unders, over-unders and more but the lasso and spider guard of Gianni prevented any passes. Near the very end of the match Gianni was able to secure a berimbolo position and came up on top with a leg drag and took the back. Before he secured the hooks, he grabbed the lapel and submitted Renan with a bow and arrow choke.

See a gallery of photos here:

The colored belts took over the majority of the mats on Saturday, July 13 as the IBJJF New York Summer Open took place in a moist basement gymnasium at the City College of New York. What felt like another world that captured you for the full day, the schedule was packed with stacked divisions one after the other.

By 10:40, the purple belt males were beginning to infuse the blue belt males on the ten mats and by noon the brown belts had joined in as well. The black belts melded in and before you know it, the divisions were closing up and open weight categories were forming brackets.

Here are the results and standouts that made their way through the hot basement atmosphere, against tough opponents and onto the podium:

Blue belts were mostly dominated by Team Lloyd Irvin members, Malachi Edmond at light-feather, Derrick Holmes at feather and Sodiq Yusuff at light. At rooster, Dean Lewis and all of his 5’2″ self managed to submit his way to his second IBJJF gold ever. He always weighs in below the weight limit and although he just moved from Pennsylvania to Virginia to train at 50/50, he is already reaping reward.

Purple belts showed skill from all teams allowing GFTeam, Alliance Marcelo Garcia, Team Lloyd Irvin and others to take the podium as no one team dominated. Standouts Daniel Goss and Lucas Mattos Moutinho of GFteam took gold in their division and also closed out the open weight division as middleweight and super-heavyweight. The takedowns of Lucas were ferocious and his cardio allowed him to keep up a fast pace throughout all of his matches.

Alliance Marcelo Garcia gained the most points as a team and in turn was granted the first place trophy. For the brown belt males, three divisions from light to medium-heavy were won by members of the Marcelo Garcia crew. Gianni Grippo won the lightweight category moving up from his normal featherweight territory, Dillon Danis who is now making his way into the IBJJF competition podiums won the middleweight division and Matheus Diniz who came from Brazil to train with Marcelo full-time won the medium-heavyweight division.

The brown belt open class was interesting purely because the winner, Maximilian Bohanan, placed second in his weight category, middleweight and the second place Kevin Mahecha placed third in his division, lightweight. Male heavyweight Tim Spriggs placed third after meeting Kevin in the semi-finals but wasn’t able to dominate the match as all of his other matches during the day.

The females brought on high-level competitors from all over: Texas, Atlanta, California, Florida, Boston, Maryland, Puerto Rico, Pennsylvania and more.

Blue belts were dominated by featherweight Annie Xiong and lightweight Anna Burdette from Alliance Marcelo Garcia although more female blue belts placed on the podium also from their team. Heavyweight Michelle Welti of Big Brothers took the top spot of the open weight podium after she defaulted gold in her weight division. Second place went to the middleweight champion Jessica Adams of Nova Uniao with Annie Xiong and fellow featherweight Viviana Eva Velez of Carlson Gracie Team in Puerto Rico taking the third place spots.

Purple belts only had light-feather, light and middle, spreading out the athletes who wanted a fair amount of matches to higher weight categories. Danielle Alvarez of GMA Alvarez BJJ placed second in both weight and absolute proving her comeback to Jiu-Jitsu is getting right back to the top. Double gold went to Katie Merrill of Boston, although a native of New York, who fought her way through five matches. Sera Kim and Jessie Carpenter won their respective division but opted out of the open weight, satisfied with their performances.

For the full results, click here.

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Marcelo during the middleweight final at the 2011World Championship, against Lucas Leite. The star was injured and didn’t fight in 2012. Photo: Ivan Trindade/GRACIEMAG

Three weeks from the biggest championship of the year, Alliance gym is already hoping to try its eighth world title among teams in California.

The eagle team will be led by Romero Jacare, Fabio Gurgel and Alexandre Gigi in Long Beach, and should take about 300 competitors to the Pyramid at the very end of May.

“Alliance is already training hard for the Worlds, and we are all focused on winning another title. The strategy here in Atlanta, as well as in other schools, is total dedication. The stars are all confirmed: Lucas Lepri, Michael Langhi, Rubens Cobrinha, Bernardo Faria, Léo Nogueira, Tarsis Humphreys, Luanna Alzuguir, Gabi Garcia and Bruno Malfacine will all train together in our camp,” said Master Romero, keeping fans in suspense about a certain five-time middleweight world champion.

“About Marcelo Garcia fighting for his sixth world title, we’ll save that surprise until the last minute (laughs) … But he’ll be here in Atlanta for a great seminar on May 18. That’s all I can anticipate,” said the gym founder.

Jacare is also very excited with the new promises of Alliance.

“From the new generation we will have several athletes in the 2013 World Championship, many of whom we are seen as promises for the future. There are the purple belts Jacob Sandoval, silver in Pan Ams and Brazilian National, and Rehan (Muttalib), both students of Cobrinha. There are also Marcelo students and the kids from Atlanta. Athletes will come to São Paulo, where Fabio is conducting hard training sessions. The team will come well prepared,” he said.

If you’re in the U.S. and want to learn from Marcelo in Georgia, visit www.alliancebjj.com to learn more.

To check who is already confirmed for the World Championship, visit the IBJJF website here.

If you want to enroll for the World Jiu-Jitsu Championship 2013, click here.