Roger Gracie is the new One Championship light-heavyweight champion.

This Friday, in Singapore, he caught Michal Pasternack with a katagatami to claim the belt.

The finish came at 2:13 of the first round.

Click play to watch the full fight.

Roger Gracie Photo: Strikeforce

One Championship announced today that the fight between Roger Gracie and Michal Pasternack, on May 6, in Singapore, will now be for the promotion’s light-heavyweight belt.

The fight was initially announced as a welterweight bout.

Roger last fought on December 2014, also at One Championship, when he beat James McSweeney with a TKO.

Overal, Roger has a 7-2 MMA record.

Roger’s opponent in Singapore has a 11-0 record, but is also coming back from a long time away from the cage.

Pasternack’s most recent fight was agains Rafael Silva, on December 2014, when he won via unanimous decision.

One of those kids was Hsien “Milo” Hwee, an eighteen-year-old who is the student of the month for Feb. 2014. A second-year college student in an IT program, he trains Muay Thai at Evolve. He was a troubled kid with low self-confidence and therefore his parents sent him to Boys’ Town but the sanctuary and martial arts have since helped him turn his life around.

Since Richard Wee, called “Papa Wee” to the boys, was working with Boys’ Town already, he decided that introducing martial arts to some of them would enrich their lives further. With world champion Muay Thai instructors, otherwise troubled kids can reap the benefits of training in the most capable environment.

In this way, students can involve to be the new champions. Check out the video of Milo and his Evolve Community Outreach Program:

Learn more about GMA Evolve MMA in Singapore and their outreach program here: http://evolve-mma.com/

Roger Gracie will fight again in Asia, and may return to the UFC with two good wins. Photo: Strikeforce

Without renewing his contract with the UFC after a decision loss to Tim Kennedy last July 6, Roger Gracie, 31, is closer to One FC, an organization based in Singapore.

He, who had a good first round before losing stamina following a 15 kg drop in weight for the bout, should now return to his home, the light heavyweight division (under 93kg).

“In the next fight he will return among the light heavyweights,” said Jorge “Joinha” Guimarães, in a conversation with Brazilian news portal R7. “I talked to Dana White and Joe Silva, and it was agreed that, if he wins two fights, he’s back to the UFC. Even so, we are closing with One FC, where he will not be bound by the contract,” said the manager.

Changes around Roger do not stop there. The Gracie should spend more time during the year in Los Angeles to train with Lyoto Machida, Glover Teixeira and other athletes of Black House MMA.

The three-time world absolute Jiu-Jitsu champion talked to GRACIEMAG about the new direction, and dismissed the possibility of returning to competitive BJJ: “I knew, even before my fight with Tim Kennedy, that it was my last fight under that contract (there was only one fight left in my old Strikeforce deal). I knew, therefore, that there was nothing certain after that bout. But I did not get where I am in Jiu-Jitsu only with victories. I did not achieve all I did in the gi by winning every fight, and I did not win ten world titles at black
belt without losing any fights. Now I have decided to devote myself to MMA, and that’s what I will do till the end of my career. No matter where I fight or for what promotion. I train to be number one. That defeat at UFC 162 was just a setback; a lot has yet to happen,” Roger assured us.

Do you believe in a triumphant return to the UFC by Roger next year? Sound off below.

The instructors for Evolve University / Photo: evolve-university.com

With technology becoming more and more infused with our gentle art, Evolve MMA has worked to become a leader in such partnership. On March 26, they launched the largest online university for martial arts.

Evolve University offers online teaching by renowned world champions within the Evolve MMA family. The professional Evolve Fight Team includes DREAM world champion Shinya Aoki, Muay Thai world champion Orono Wor Petchpun, UFC fighter Rafael dos Anjos, US Olympian Heath Sims, ONE FC superstar Zorobabel Moreira, Total Combat FC champion Eddie Ng, WBA Boxing world champion Yodsanan Sityodtong, Jiu-Jitsu world champion Leandro Issa, Muay Thai world champion Namsaknoi Yudthagarngamtorn, Muay Thai world champion Attachai Fairtex, No-Gi world champion Takeo Tani, MCFC champion Mitch Chilson, and many others.

The first phase of Evolve University will include thousands of online tutorial videos across different martial arts such as Muay Thai, Jiu-Jitsu, Mixed Martial Arts, etc. The next additional phases of Evolve University will include interactive teaching guides, community enrichment tools, course management software, degree certifications, and much more.

Chatri Sityodtong, founder and chairman of both Evolve MMA and Evolve University, stresses, “Evolve Mixed Martial Arts is once again revolutionizing the martial arts industry in Asia with the introduction of Evolve University, Asia’s largest online university for martial arts. For the first time in history, anyone anywhere in the world will be able to learn martial arts and self-defense under our decorated World Champions.”

Clara Leo, CEO, also adds, “I am excited today to unveil Evolve University to the world. Evolve University has been in stealth mode operations for the last 24 months, developing proprietary systems, producing thousands of high quality, tutorial videos, and building complex software for the future. Evolve University provides unprecedented access to self-defense knowledge to every person on the globe, irrespective of geographic location. Unfortunately, today we all live in a world of senseless violence against innocent victims. Every week, you hear terrible news stories from around the world. At Evolve MMA, we believe that authentic self-defense knowledge is a critical necessity for everyday life. Evolve University aims to make this world a safer place.”

To read more about Evolve University, please go to www.Evolve-University.com

Shinya Aoki taps out Lyle Beerbohm at 2011 Strikeforce event. (Photo by Esther Lin)

The upcoming One FC lightweight title fight is going to be a real treat for Jiu-Jitsu lovers.

The current belt holder, Kotetsu “No Face” Boku, will have to contend with Jiu-Jitsu and judo black belt Shinya Aoki as a challenger. They will face off on April 5 at “One FC: Kings & Champions” in Singapore.

Aoki (32-6) has 22 assorted submission victories to his name. Only Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira comes close to as many submission wins at top-tier events with 21.

Dishing out gogoplatas, flying triangles and neck cranks, Aoki has forced opponents to tap out in several MMA promotions such as Dream, Bellator and Strikeforce. He enters the title fight off a win over Antonio Mckee at Dream 18.

Boku (20-7-2) beat Brazilian black belt Zorobabel Moreira by TKO to win the inaugural One FC lightweight title fight in his last fight.

Check out Aoki’s Jiu-Jitsu and MMA highlight reel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtiExYDh7Po

For more UFC and MMA coverage,
visit GRACIEMAG.com’s Choke MMA section

Professor:

Black Belt Rafael “Gordinho” Correa

Address: 1 Selegie Road, Unit #02-22, Singapore 188306

Phone: 65 6337-0082

Website: www.evolve-mma.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/evolvemma.group

About:

Evolve’s mission is to inspire dramatic positive change in our students, empowering them to achieve a healthier, happier, and more productive life through martial arts. By creating a safe, fun, and supportive environment, Evolve enables everyone to enjoy the benefits of martial arts: Fitness and good health, Confidence, mental strength, and discipline, Self-defense for the real world, lifelong friendships.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plr7uM-m-0Q

Rafael dos Anjos dominated Mark Bocek at UFC 154. Photo by Josh Hedges/UFC.

Following his convincing performance against Mark Bocek at UFC 154, an enthusiastic portion of Brazil’s specialized media has started murmuring about Rafael dos Anjos being a potential challenger to Ben Henderson’s lightweight belt.

Rafael isn’t getting caught up in the hype, though. The Roberto Gordo Jiu-Jitsu black belt knows he’s got some holes in his game to patch up and some rungs on the ladder of challengers to climb. And the best part: he’s in no hurry.

Check out what we at GRACIEMAG.com learned from him in a recent conversation:

Wrestling, Jiu-Jitsu or standing and banging—which part of your performance against Josh Bocek last Saturday were you most pleased with?

I feel it was a good fight all around. I managed to impose my game plan on him and neutralize Mark’s always dangerous game. He’s a well-rounded fighter too. Where my standup is concerned, I always try to improve on where I’m weakest, which is why I trained with Rafael Cordeiro at Kings MMA and at Black House, as well as at Evolve MMA in Singapore. Training at all these places has been beneficial to me. In the lead-up to UFC 154 I spent two weeks in Singapore working on my striking with the Thai boxing aces they have over there, and that helped me a lot.

What’s the difference between the Thai boxing training in Singapore and that with Rafa at Kings MMA in California?

With Rafael it’s MMA-geared Thai boxing, combining standup striking with takedowns and even grappling. Now, in Singapore it’s pure Thai boxing.

How many steps do you feel you are from Ben Henderson?

I don’t know how many steps away from him I am right now, but I am forging ahead on my path. All I know is that our styles are kind of different, our origins too. He comes from taekwondo and wrestling, while I come from Jiu-Jitsu.

Dana White said he intends to hold 12 events in Brazil next year. Do you expect to fight in Brazil in 2013?

It would be great. It’s been a while since I’ve had the crowd on my side (laughs).

And who will you face next? Gleison Tibau is a solid name, and one who beat you. Would you like a rematch?

I would like one. This is a really stacked division, though, so I don’t think it’s too likely.

At 11am on a Saturday morning, 28 April 2012, having stepped into Top Gym Singapore, I found myself facing a predicament. Having incurred a minor slipped disc about 2 months ago, I was put on ice by the doctors until at least the middle of the year. Which in itself is not the worst thing. However, being on the side-lines is the last place I wanted to be at a John Will seminar.

(For those uninformed: John Bernard Will is part of the “dirty dozen”—one of the first non-Brazilians to earn a black belt in BJJ. John received his black belt from Rigan and Jean-Jacques Machado Brothers; and is head of the Will-Machado team.)

Attempting to make the best of a potentially frustrating situation, I turned to the lesson of one of my favourite teachers, the German philosopher Werner Hamacher. He contends that there is a difference between listening and hearing. Not just that the former is active whilst the latter is potentially passive. But more importantly, in order to listen, one has to cease hearing: for one can hear many things at the same time, but to listen—in the precise sense of attending to, responding with—one has to select one, whilst ignoring all other sounds, voices, things.

Which is precisely what John Will recommends in any situation. Whilst reinforcing the importance of details, he encourages every one to focus on “tiny increments” rather than attempting to take on “entire problems.” For instance, if one is caught in side control, “it makes little sense to think of getting out in one move”; instead one should ask oneself “how [one] can improve [one’s] situation by 5%.” In fact, the entire notion of “moves” is problematic: for that doesn’t take into account the fact that the other person is moving, constantly shifting, reacting to you as you are to her.

And this is why Will says: “I don’t believe in having end goals.” Even though one needs to have a general idea of where one is headed, focussing on the end only serves to blinker one to the situation, blind one to the other person. Instead of attending to, reacting with, listening, one is merely hearing. In Will’s words: “one is being a crocodile—in denial of the reality, the situation, one is facing.”

Will’s reminder to stay in the moment, to listen, is a call for one to open oneself to the possibilities of the other. And: to open oneself to the possibilities of the unknown, the yet to come, about to come. In foregrounding the fact that listening entails choosing, one also unveils the aspect of exclusion in choice: in attending to one, one always already has to leave out other(s). However, this does not mean that the ones that are left aside are gone: one can always be affected by something that is beyond one’s cognitive sphere—just because you do not see a bus does not mean that it cannot hit you. So, even as listening involves ceasing hearing, one who truly listens always also keeps in mind that listening brings with it the unheard, the unhearable. One should never forget that the submission that catches you is the one you did not see—or hear—coming. This perhaps opens another dossier in Rickson Gracie’s now famous phrase “invisible jujitsu”: the invisibility is not just in one’s own movements, but also in the very relationality between oneself and the other. What remains invisible—silent—is other’s movement in relation to oneself.

Thus, listening is attending to relationality itself.

Which means that there cannot be an object in listening, let alone an object to listening. Which also means that one can never know if one has listened, or if one is even listening. It is nothing more, and nothing less, than an approach.

And it is the notion of approaches that brings us all the way back to the beginning, to the title itself. To the teaching of Aristotle: in particular his lesson on how to climb a mountain. If one were to do it haphazardly, one would be stumbling around in circles, and will quite possibly go nowhere. It is only with skill, with method—meta hodos (across a path)—that one has the possibility of ever reaching the top. This in no way means that one single method would allow one to climb all mountains: each path calls for a different response, calls for one to pay attention to the singularity of the trail. Which means that even as experience with other mountains will help, one must always listen—attend to the unhearable(s)—of this particular mountain. Every guard you pass gives you a better idea of passing guards: but one has to attend to the specific relationality that this guard is presenting to one.

So, even as we remember to drill—for learning is mimetic, and thus requires repetition—we should also keep in mind that as we pay attention to the details of every technique, we need to keep ourselves attuned to the relationality between ourselves and the other person.

And perhaps it is in this very manner that the gap between theory and practice can be approached. By keeping in mind the singularity of both situations, every situation—so, it is not that in theory this should happen but in reality there are many variations, but more radically that theory itself is multiple; each time one attempts to address a situation through theory, one is always already facing the uncertainties of reality. Thus, each attempt to theorise, to think of, is always already a practice in responding to potential unknowns, the unhearables—a practice in listening.

Since all listening occurs in a particular situation, the very place—space—one is in is crucial. Thus, we might momentarily turn out attention to the notion of seminars—and attend to the echoes of seminaries, disseminations, inseminations, and seeds (semen). For, in attending a seminar, one temporarily displaces oneself—goes away to a space specifically to learn from someone—and where the person conducting teaches, professes—bearing in mind that in jujitsu our teachers are called professors—their particular approach to the art. More importantly, the profession occurs in a distinct period, a definite time frame (a few hours, a day, even a week; but with a defined end point). Thus, rather than guide the students like (s)he would in an academy, the professor has to plant a few seeds of thought; how they develop, germinate, spread, is beyond her or his control. Moreover, those who attend the seminar can also never be sure how these seeds, thoughts, will grow, or if they even will. Hence, even as we go to seminars to learn, what, how, or even if, we learn always already remains hidden from us—until learning happens, we potentially remain deaf to its call. To compound matters, we usually realise that we have learnt retrospectively. Thus, even when the lesson is unveiled to us, the point at, and in which, we have learnt remains veiled from us. In this manner, the scene of the seminar itself is nothing more than the setting for possibility—there can be no knowable object to it, until perhaps it happens.

But, we must not forget that for possibility to be (even if it is a possibility to not-be) there has to be a space; one which cannot be defined, set, known, in advance. And what else is this space but the fringe—the demarcation that both separates and always already joins.

Perhaps then, it is only by being on the side—the fringe—of the seminar, that I had the opportunity to tune in—listen—not just to the possibilities that John Will was offering, but to the very space of possibility that is the seminar.

* Jeremy Fernando is the Jean Baudrillard Fellow at The European Graduate School. Even though he has a black belt in Judo, he spends an inordinate amount of time facing the ceiling. Whilst on his back, he has refined tapping out to an art form; complete with rhythm and all.

Rightfully excited about having the likes of Melvin Manhoef, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Zorobabel Moreira and Fabricio Monteiro in tomorrow’s show, promotional head honcho Victor Cui (previously featured here on GRACIEMAG.com) explains what prompted him to make the entire card free, in the following video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmBbSgl3FQ8

Check out the full card for tomorrow’s show:

One FC 3 – War of the Lions
March 31, 2012
Singapore

Main Event: Felipe Enomoto vs. Zorobabel “Zoro” Moreira

Tatsuya “Crusher” Kawajiri vs. Donald Sanchez
Ole “Iron Fist” Laursen vs. Eduard “Landslide” Folayang
Yuya Shirai vs. Fabricio “Pitbull” Monteiro
Yoshiyuki Nakanishi vs. Malvin Manhoef
Jian Kai Chee vs. Eddie Ng
Masakazu Imanari vs. Kevin Belingon
Jeet Towhi vs. Nicole Chua
Quek Kim Hock vs. Juan Wen Jie
Jiang Long Yun vs. Yodsanan Sityodtong
Richie Whitson vs. Danny Van Bergen

GMA member Rodrigo Medeiros, leader of BJJ Revolution, has two announcements to make.

He recently has inaugurated a new dojo for his academy in San Diego.

It is the new training grounds for the team six times American Nationals champion.

And next March, Medeiros is to embark in a grand adventure.

He will be opening an academy in Hong Kong.

For more info, go to rodrigomedeirosbjj.com

Babalu unleashing one of his trademark kicks / GRACIEMAG.com archive photo

Former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Renato “Babalu” Sobral is the latest fighter to sign on with One FC. The headmaster at Gracie Barra Cerritos, in California, should make his debut for the Asian promotion in March 2012, joining the card for the One FC/Dream show in Singapore.

With a storied career in the UFC, Babalu has won 36 of his 45 career fights and overcome the likes of Chael Sonnen, Mauricio Shogun, Kevin Randleman and Robbie Lawler. The Brazilian’s last appearance under the Strikeforce banner came in December of 2010, when he was knocked out by Dan Henderson in the first round.

An interesting partnership was recently formed between Singapore’s One FC, Japan’s Dream, as well as Filipino promotion URCC, Australia’s CFC and South Korea’s Road FC. For 2012, the plan is for the champions of each of the events to face off and unify titles, crowing the first Asian MMA champions.