Photo: Personal Archive

Bibiano Fernandes, 41, has an appointment under One Championship for December 5. The bantamweight champion will be defending his belt against John Lineker, who has only fought three times in the organization, between 2019 and 2021. The announcement was made by One’s CEO, Chatri Sityodtong.

Throughout his career, which began in 2004, Bibiano has achieved 24 wins and suffered four losses. In One Championship, which has employed him since 2012, he has 11 wins and just one loss.

“I’m happy to be able to defend my belt again,” the Brazilian said in a recent interview. “I’ve been on this journey for a long time. I’m happy, healthy, well trained. I want to show younger people that with discipline and hard work, you can get to where you want. Bibiano is the result of a lot of effort, lots of faith and dedication.”

In his native state of Amazonas, where he was staying several days ago, Bibiano got in touch with his roots before returning to Canada to resume his training.

“I’m in Manaus to visit my family and friends and have contact with nature,” he said. “I always come to Brazil before I have an important appointment in my life. Out here, the other day, I did a lecture at a military school for more than 200 students, where I spoke about the importance of being confident, having discipline and courage.” He added: “I’m quite happy to be here.”

Bibiano also revealed that he’s not done evolving in Jiu-Jitsu, as was recently recognized by his teacher, Prof. Osvaldo Alves.

“I’ve received another degree on the black belt,” said Bibiano, who is a three-time BJJ world champion. “I’m happy to conquer another step in the black belt in Jiu-Jitsu, the sport that gave me everything I have. I lost my mom very early, and my dad had no means to raise us; I went to the interior of Amazonas, but if today I am someone, it was the sport that saved me and because I believed I could be someone.”

Week 7 of Renzo Gracie Online Academy offers you technical knowledge to defend against one of the worst situations in BJJ: being attacked from the back.

Yes, we mean that moment your opponent places the hooks with the legs, attaches themselves to your torso like a backpack and starts taking aim at your neck or joints.

If you get nervous just thinking about it, don’t miss the classes taught by Robson Gracie Jr., who teaches over ten different ways to escape from having your back controlled, blocking finish attempts and positioning yourself favorably.

After you study and absorb the mechanics taught by Robson Gracie, you will be qualified to armor your back against even the most skilled back-takers at your gym and in competitions.

Week 7 of Renzo Gracie Online Academy is organized in this manner:

• Thirteen techniques of defense against back control.
• Sumi Gaeshi: the mechanic of the “sacrifice technique” that has you initially going to the ground to only then find your opponent’s point of unbalancing.
• Lifestyle: Bruno Fernandes will show you that age is relative in BJJ.

Day 1: Monday

Lesson 1: Renzo Gracie’s defense against back control

Being controlled from the back, Renzo walks you through blocking choke attempts and escaping safely, repositioning yourself to put your foe in your guard.

Lesson 2: Back defense trapping your opponent’s arms

When your opponent controls your back, you must not get terrified. Resort to cold blood and technical refinement, as in this subtle defense taught by Robson Gracie Jr.

Lesson 3: Back defense ending up on top

Learn an efficient way to escape from your opponent’s control over your back, ending up on top of them, in the guard or even on half-guard.

Day 2: Tuesday

Lesson 4: Back defense moving to half-guard

Be careful as you try to escape from your opponent’s back control, because they might be able to anticipate what you’re doing, repositioning themselves on the mount. Check out how Robsinho Gracie prevents this.

Lesson 5: Back defense passing your opponent’s arm to the other side

The moment your opponent advances one hand to grab your collar may be a decisive one. See how Robsinho Gracie capitalizes on this.

Lesson 6: Back defense variation passing your opponent’s arm to the other side

Robsinho Gracie again uses the defense taught in the previous lesson. However, now, instead of ending up inside his opponent’s guard, Robsinho ends up on the bottom, playing guard. Understand why this happens, and add these two options to your game.

Day 3: Wednesday

Lesson 7: Back defense for when your opponent controls your collar

If, during the back attack, your opponent manages to pass their arm flush with your neck and control the cross collar, there is a high risk of you getting subbed. Even so, there are ways to defend against the choke and escape.

Lesson 8: Back defense foiling the rear naked choke

Be careful as you try to defend against the cross-collar choke from the back, because, depending on the direction you try to take your opponent’s arm, you may leave your neck vulnerable to an RNC.

Lesson 9: Lifestyle / You will never be too old to train BJJ

“I’m too old to practice BJJ.” Bruno Fernandes destroys this kind of thinking — one of the most common excuses for not enrolling in a gym.

Day 4: Thursday

Lesson 10: Defend by moving your head in a circle

If your opponent uses their head to direct your body to the side that favors the choke, you can move your neck so as to circle their head, finding space to escape from the move.

Lesson 11: Escape by the “wrong side”

When you get attacked from the back, even if your opponent manages to control your cross collar and direct your body to the side that favors the choke, there is an efficient way for you to defend and escape.

Lesson 12: Freeing yourself from the seat belt

The back control known as the seat belt is very efficient, able to connect the attacker to their opponent’s back in a very tight way, like a backpack. But there are ways to escape.

Day 5: Friday

Lesson 13: Freeing your head downward

In essence, when we get attacked from the back, what we need in order to escape is to open up space. As he pulls the arm that attacks his neck, Robson gets the space necessary to slip his head downward and reposition himself on half-guard.

Lesson 14: Last-ditch defense

Robson Gracie teaches the hardest of all his defensive options against chokes from the back. It’s a daring spin — one so unexpected, it may surprise many opponents.

Lesson 15: Sumi Gaeshi

The sumi gaeshi is known as a “sacrifice technique,” since the fighter performing it goes to the ground at first, and only then finds their opponent’s point of unbalancing. It’s a very daring move. And one of the most beautiful ones in this course.

P.S. Improve your jiu-jitsu in Renzo Gracie’s team – RGOA

The RGOA schedule:

Week 1: Attacks from closed guard

Week 2: Guard retention

Week 3: Side attacks

Week 4: Escape from side control

Week 5: Back-takes

Week 6: Attacks from the back

Week 8, 9 …, 998, 999, 1000: Surprise! Each week a new topic.

Plus: Takedowns, Self-Defense, Lifestyle tips, Documentaries, Interviews, etc.

Enroll now and join the planet’s most complete and modern online BJJ school.

Prepare for the upcoming no-gi tournaments: No-gi Pans and No-gi World Championship!

Check out the technique:

Many people have been playing around with the position but one brown belt under Rubens Cobrinha Charles has worked on a counter.

Here, Isaac Doederlein explains a way to not only combat the tie-up but he also shows how you can take the back from there. Check it out and let us know if this seems like something you would use:

Travis Stevens, black belt under Renzo Gracie/John Danaher, shows us how to defend the armbar when in the turtle position like we saw from Ronda Rousey vs. Meisha Tate. Check it out:

The armbar is a submission most found in the white belt world. Seen from most anywhere, it can also be used when an initial submission is failing to work– like the triangle.

Check out some shots of these white belts using the armbar submission to finish their opponents:

Renan Barao (pictured) is injured and off the UFC 161 card, according to reports. (Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)

Renan Barao has sustained an undisclosed injury and been forced out of his UFC 161 interim title defense against Eddie Wineland, according to reports.

Barao and Wineland were scheduled to headline the card, which takes place on June 15 at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

No replacements have been confirmed for the match, and the UFC is yet to announce a change to the UFC 161 card.

At the time of this publication, a bout between Dan Henderson and Rashad Evans is tabbed to co-main event the card, preceded by a rematch between Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira.

GRACIEMAG.com will update with changes to the UFC 161 card as more information becomes available.

News of the Barao injury was first reported by Tatame.

Black belts Rousimar Toquinho and Murilo Bustamante paid a visit to a project where Jiu-Jitsu and martial arts are used as tools for rehabbing criminals in Rio de Janeiro (Praetorian brand publicity photo).

Ever since November of 2011, Complexo Penitenciário Genicinó, a penitentiary complex located in the Bangu neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro City, has been a testing ground for an efficient tool for prisoner rehabilitation—Jiu-Jitsu.

According to an article printed in Brazil’s O Globo newspaper (in Portuguese), over the years the measure has proven successful in the compound, now the largest prison in Latin America, with 18,000 detainees.

To be allowed to frequent the Jiu-Jitsu, boxing and Thai boxing academies on the prison grounds, prisoners have to be studying at the on-site schools, undergo rigorous medicals and, most importantly, not do anything that could go on their record as bad behavior or a transgression over the course of their sentence.

In the Jiu-Jitsu room at Bangu 4 prison, Mioses Julio Bormac, the subsecretary for prisoner treatment and a Jiu-Jitsu black belt, sets an example by himself rolling with convicts—ex-drug dealers, thieves, among others.

“These guys will one day be back on the street. If we don’t provide them with opportunities, it’ll be all the worse for society. They’ll be all the more perverse when they walk out these doors,” the subsecretary says in the article. “I don’t see martial arts as being a stimulus for aggression, but as a philosophy of self-defense and conduct. So far, we haven’t had a single incident involving the detainees. We’re more likely to see a brawl happen during soccer games in the jail yard than during martial arts class,” Moises illustrates.

Teaching Jiu-Jitsu class is the responsibility of Alan Freitas, a black belt from Carlson Gracie academy, and is backed by the likes of Master Sylvio Behring and the Pretorian brand of martial arts gear.

“I’ve been criticized for teaching them Jiu-Jitsu ever since I accepted this challenge,” says Alan. “People think I’m coming here to teach them to fight, providing criminals with weapons. To me Jiu-Jitsu teaches people to change their lives. So long as I have faith in the power of sport, I’ll continue to believe in this work I’m doing.”

Although they were suspicious at the outset, the prison guards have now noted positive changes in the behavior of the prisoners practicing Jiu-Jitsu.

Isaque Paiva and his triangle / Photo by Ivan Trindade/GRACIEMAG

A slender and hard-working featherweight, Isaque Paiva is currently a bearer of one of the most sterling triangles in the competitive Jiu-Jitsu scene.

And it was with that in mind that GRACIEMAG.com asked the black belt, who won the South American Championship last weekend, to demonstrate one of his favorite positions.

He scoured his arsenal and sent in the following one, for when the opponent attempts to relieve the pressure of the triangle by wrapping his arm around the leg, thus leaving himself exposed to the omoplata.

That’s when Isaque, also known as Boia, inflicts his venom.

First he pretends to give up on the triangle, moving one hand to the belt and the other to the collar – as you can see at the 59-second mark.

Isaque then sticks a hand in at the collar to cause bother with the choke (1:05 min), and returns to the triangle, now without hindrance.

Dig that one, guard players?

Ben Henderson in staredown with Frankie Edgar at pre-UFC 150 press conference / UFC publicity photo

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is taking its brand of excitement to Denver, Colorado, this Saturday. The fight headlining the UFC 150 show is a lightweight-title rematch between Ben Henderson and Frankie Edgar that promises fireworks. Further major attractions on the card for Colorado are the Donald Cerrone–Melvin Guillard showdown and former Strikeforce middleweight champion Jake Shields’s encounter with Ed Herman.

But before the action can take place, the fighters have to take on the scale. And you can watch the official weigh-ins live here on GRACIEMAG.com starting at 7 pm Brazilian time (10 pm GMT). Don’t miss it.

UFC 150
Denver, Colorado
August 11, 2012

Ben Henderson vs Frankie Edgar
Donald Cerrone vs Melvin Guillard
Jake Shields vs Ed Herman
Yushin Okami vs Buddy Roberts
Justin Lawrence vs Max Holloway
Dennis Bermudez vs Tom Hayden
Jared Hamman vs. Michael Kuiper
Ken Stone vs Erik Perez
Dustin Pague vs Chico Camus

Henderson celebrates victory over Edgar atUFC 144. UFC publicity photo.

The UFC lightweight champion, Ben Henderson, is all set for his rematch with Frank Edgar, the former king of the promotion’s deepest division. The showdown goes down this Saturday in Denver, Colorado, at UFC 150. The first time the two locked horns to determine the divisional number one ended somewhat contentiously for the evenness of the bout, prompting Dana White to set up a second encounter almost immediately.

Henderson showed little nerves when addressing the fight. “I don’t feel any pressure. The most pressure in a fight is the pressure I put on myself. I expect to put in a great performance every time I step in the octagon, whether I win, lose or draw,” he told the Sportv.com website.

This calmness of Henderson’s is a common characteristic among gentle-art practitioners, who learn to coolly assess whatever situation they are in. A Jiu-Jitsu brown belt, Henderson is a regular at Gi Jiu-Jitsu competitions and even took bronze at the 2011 World Championship.

What about you, gentle reader, will Ben Henderson hang on to his belt? Will he put his gentle-art skills to good use?

In the video from the 2011 Arizona State BJJ Championship below, you can get a sense of just how sharp the champion’s Jiu-Jitsu is.

Note how he defends against a Kimura by grabbing his opponent’s ankle.

UFC 150
Denver, Colorado
August 11, 2012

Ben Henderson vs Frankie Edgar
Donald Cerrone vs Melvin Guillard
Jake Shields vs Ed Herman
Yushin Okami vs Buddy Roberts
Justin Lawrence vs Max Holloway
Dennis Bermudez vs Tom Hayden
Jared Hamman vs. Michael Kuiper
Ken Stone vs Erik Perez
Dustin Pague vs Chico Camus