Belda Sando Bali Incident: Fighter Apologizes After Viral Tourist Choke in Uluwatu

Belda Sando Bali Incident: Fighter Apologizes After Viral Tourist Choke in Uluwatu
  • The Belda Sando Bali incident went viral after footage showed the Balinese fighter and gym owner restraining a Russian tourist in Uluwatu with a rear naked choke.
  • The tourist was accused of drunkenly touching women, harassing people, walking into the road, and slapping strangers before Sando intervened.
  • Sando later apologized, saying his reaction “may not have been right,” while also insisting the tourist had crossed the line first.
  • The clip landed in the middle of a bigger Bali debate about tourist misconduct, local patience running thin, and stricter rules pushed by provincial authorities.

The Belda Sando Bali incident was always going to travel fast online. A shirtless tourist, a viral chokehold, locals shouting for respect, and a fighter standing over the moment like it was both street justice and a warning shot to every badly behaved visitor on the island.

But what made this clip explode was not just the physicality of it. It was the message wrapped around it: Bali’s welcome mat is still out, but more locals seem ready to pull it back from tourists who treat the island like a playground with no rules.

In the footage and follow-up posts, Sando framed the situation as an intervention after a drunk foreigner allegedly crossed repeated lines in public.

Then, almost as quickly as the clip spread, the fighter and gym owner moved into damage-control mode, apologizing for the way he handled it while still doubling down on the reason he stepped in.

Why The Belda Sando Bali Incident Blew Up

The clip had everything the algorithm loves and everything locals are tired of. It showed Belda Brig Sando on the ground controlling a Russian tourist in Uluwatu while bystanders crowded around and the tourist appeared to lose consciousness.

In the video, Sando could be heard telling him to “Respect locals,” while accusing him of touching girls and acting without respect. That alone would have been enough to send the clip racing across Instagram, tabloids, and fight media.

What gave the Belda Sando Bali incident real fuel, though, was timing. Bali has already spent the last year leaning harder into “quality tourism” language, with Governor Wayan Koster and provincial authorities repeatedly stressing that foreign visitors are expected to respect local customs, public order, and the island’s cultural rules.

So when this video surfaced, it did not feel like a random one-off. It landed on top of an argument Bali was already having.

What The Video Shows In Uluwatu

According to Sando’s own caption and the reporting built around the footage, the tourist had allegedly been drunk, touching people, wandering into the road, stopping strangers, and even slapping heads before things escalated.

Sando said nobody intervened until the man touched one of his friends, which is when he stepped in and the confrontation turned physical.

The visual part is what made the video so hard to ignore. Sando had the man grounded in a chokehold while others shouted around them.

At one point, a bystander said the tourist was out. When the man regained consciousness, he reportedly responded, “I got it,” while Sando kept pressing the point that Bali is welcoming, but not a place where visitors can behave however they want.

Bali is safe. Bali people are nice. You can do whatever you want in Bali, but respect [our] locals.
– Belda Brig Sando –

From a grappling angle, the moment is part of why this story spread so hard in fight circles. It did not look like wild swinging or a drunken pile-on. It looked like a fighter using a choke to shut a chaotic situation down fast.

That does not automatically make it right, and Sando later admitted as much, but it does explain why combat sports audiences locked onto the clip immediately.

Why Bali Tourist Misconduct Is Becoming A Bigger Story

This is where the story stops being only about one tourist and one fighter. Bali’s provincial government formally issued updated rules for foreign visitors in March 2025, requiring tourists to behave respectfully in public places, honor local customs, and face sanctions or legal processes if they violate the rules.

Officials have also framed the island’s tourism future around discipline, sustainability, and culture-based tourism rather than simple volume.

That context matters because the Belda Sando Bali incident tapped straight into a deeper local frustration. Bali still depends heavily on tourism, but local leaders have made it increasingly clear that they do not want tourism without boundaries.

Stories about disrespectful behavior, disorder in nightlife zones, and foreigners ignoring local rules have made that tension more visible over the past year. This clip, fair or not, became an instant symbol of that mood.

Why Belda Sando Apologized After The Choke

What makes the whole thing more interesting is that Sando did not posture like a man chasing pure viral clout. In a follow-up explanation, he said the incident happened at around 12:30 a.m. on March 30 after Uluwatu Fight Night, and he acknowledged that his response crossed a line too.

That apology matters because it stops the story from being a simple hero narrative. Sando clearly wanted to defend his community, but he also understood that choking a tourist unconscious on camera is not exactly a clean PR win.

There is also a layer of personal context here. Long before the Belda Sando Bali incident, Sando had publicly presented himself as someone trying to build opportunities for local fighters, grow Uluwatu Fight Night, and protect local identity in a tourist-heavy part of Bali.

In a profile published before this controversy, he said he wanted to help make Bali more beautiful and inspire others to respect the culture. That does not excuse the choke. It does explain why he seemed to see the moment as something bigger than a late-night argument.

I want to help make Bali more beautiful and inspire others to respect the culture.
– Belda Sando –

One Viral Night, One Bigger Warning For Bali Visitors

The Belda Sando Bali incident is the kind of story that can get flattened into a cheap headline: drunk tourist gets choked, local fighter becomes instant folk hero, end of story. But that version misses the real hook.

This was not just about one man getting restrained in Uluwatu. It was about how quickly public patience can evaporate when a destination built on hospitality starts feeling disrespected by the people it welcomes.

For fight fans, the viral angle is obvious. For Bali, the bigger message is harsher. The island still sells paradise, but paradise comes with rules, and locals seem increasingly willing to say that out loud. Sando’s apology kept him from leaning fully into vigilante-glory territory.

BJJ Marketing Problem Exposed: UFC BJJ, ONE And Flo Have The Stars, But Not The Story

BJJ Marketing Problem Exposed: UFC BJJ, ONE And Flo Have The Stars, But Not The Story
  • The BJJ marketing problem is back in focus after a recent column argued that grappling’s biggest issue is not talent, but how badly promotions package and sell that talent.
  • The timing matters: Tye Ruotolo defended his ONE welterweight submission grappling title on March 13, Nick Rodriguez made his UFC BJJ debut on March 12, and FloGrappling is already pushing WNO 32 for March 31.
  • UFC BJJ has also been talking bigger pay and tighter exclusivity, which only raises the pressure on promotions to actually create stars rather than just stage matches.
  • The uncomfortable takeaway is simple: BJJ does not look short on elite athletes right now. It looks short on narrative, identity, and mainstream-level promotion.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is not suffering from a shortage of killers. That is what makes the BJJ marketing problem hit so much harder.

At the exact moment the sport has world-class names spread across UFC BJJ, ONE Championship, and FloGrappling, it still cannot consistently turn that talent into the kind of momentum that feels bigger than the hardcore bubble.

A recent opinion piece put that frustration into words, arguing bluntly that the issue is not the athletes. It is the people and platforms supposedly selling them.

Why The BJJ Marketing Problem Feels So Obvious Right Now

The timing is almost too perfect. On March 13, Tye Ruotolo defended his ONE welterweight submission grappling world title against Pawel Jaworski in Bangkok.

One day earlier, Nick Rodriguez stepped into UFC BJJ 6 for his promotional debut against Elder Cruz. And on March 17, FloGrappling was already rolling out the official push for WNO 32, set for March 31. That is not a dead sport calendar. That is a loaded one.

And yet the broader vibe around pro grappling still feels oddly small. Not empty. Not talent-poor. Small. That difference matters.

Small means the athletes are there, the moments are there, and even the platforms are there, but the audience still is not being pulled into something that feels urgent, must-watch, and impossible to ignore. That is a promotional failure more than an athletic one.

The harsh part is that grappling promoters keep reaching for shortcuts. Manufactured face-off tension, social clips built around one weird gimmick, recycled Gordon Ryan discourse, and random viral bait can create noise for a few hours, but none of that consistently builds a star.

It builds fragments. That is why the BJJ marketing problem feels less like a temporary slump and more like a structural habit.

UFC BJJ Has Names, Money, And Buzz – So Why Isn’t It Hitting Harder?

UFC BJJ probably has the clearest case study because it has something nobody else in grappling can really match: the UFC brand. If a platform with that kind of built-in recognition puts Nick Rodriguez, Ffion Davies, and Mason Fowler on one card, the expectation is obvious.

It should feel like a statement event. Instead, the debate coming out of UFC BJJ 6 was still whether the platform is genuinely breaking through or just existing loudly inside the same niche.

That question gets sharper when money enters the picture. Claudia Gadelha has recently discussed exclusive deals, and recent reporting has framed UFC BJJ as a place where top contracts can be significantly higher than what many grapplers have historically expected.

FloGrappling also reported that UFC BJJ’s exclusive athletes will not compete at ADCC-style events after 2026. In other words, the promotion is asking to be taken seriously as a long-term home. If that is the pitch, then the storytelling standard has to rise with it.

Because that is the real pressure point: exclusivity without breakout visibility feels like a cage, not a launchpad. If UFC BJJ wants athletes to tie their identities to the platform, it has to do more than host them in a bowl and hope the logo carries the weight. It has to make people care before the match starts.

Tye Ruotolo, ONE Championship, And The Star Who Should Be Easier To Sell

Tye Ruotolo is exactly the kind of athlete promotions should dream about. He is young, elite, aggressive, already accomplished, and attached to a style that is actually fun to watch. On March 13 he retained his ONE title for the third time, which should be the kind of result that keeps an athlete permanently in the conversation.

But this is where the criticism lands hardest. Ruotolo has all the ingredients of a star, yet too often he still feels like a star that hardcore fans discover in bursts instead of one the broader combat sports audience is being steadily taught to follow.

That is not on him alone. That is on the machinery around him. A talent like that should not fade in and out of focus depending on whether a random clip catches fire.

ONE has proven it can present combat sports beautifully. The problem is that polished presentation is not the same as persistent narrative building. A title defense is an event. A star arc is a campaign. Grappling promotions keep confusing the two.

FloGrappling And WNO 32 Can’t Just Keep Feeding The Same Audience

FloGrappling sits in a strange place because it is still one of the central media engines in the sport, and WNO remains one of the most recognizable recurring brands in No-Gi.

WNO 32 is already being pushed as the next major card, but that alone is not the same thing as broadening the tent. Hardcore grapplers know what WNO is. The bigger question is whether anyone outside that circle is being given a reason to care who is fighting and why it matters now.

That is where the BJJ marketing problem becomes impossible to ignore. Running cards is not the same as building myth. Posting match graphics is not the same as creating anticipation. And a sport full of elite technicians will always look flatter than it should if the promotions keep acting like the event itself is the story. It is not. The people are the story.

BJJ Doesn’t Need Better Athletes – It Needs Someone To Sell The Story

The most brutal part of this whole debate is that it feels avoidable. BJJ does not need more talent to prove its value. It already has Tye Ruotolo. It already has Nicky Rod. It already has Mikey Musumeci, Mason Fowler, Ffion Davies, and a long list of others who can give promoters angles, rivalries, styles, and personalities to work with.

What it needs is conviction. It needs promotions to stop treating social-media gimmicks like a substitute for actual star-building. It needs continuity, sharper storytelling, and a clearer answer to a very basic question: why should somebody who is not already deep in Jiu-Jitsu care about this athlete tonight?

Until that answer gets better, the BJJ marketing problem is going nowhere. The mats are full of world-class athletes. The missing piece is the machine that knows how to make the rest of the world remember their names.

Brock Lesnar Story Reveals The Brutal Childhood Punishment Behind His Wrestling Obsession

Brock Lesnar Story Reveals The Brutal Childhood Punishment Behind His Wrestling Obsession
  • A new Brock Lesnar story has gone viral after he recalled what happened when he lost youth wrestling tournaments.
  • The WWE legend and former UFC champ said his mother would sometimes leave him at the venue and force him to find his own way home.
  • The comment instantly grabbed attention because it sounds extreme even by old-school combat sports standards.
  • The moment offers a revealing look at the pressure, fear, and edge that helped shape one of the most intimidating athletes combat sports has ever seen.

There are hard-nosed childhood sports stories, and then there is this Brock Lesnar story.

During a recent appearance on Spittin’ Chiclets, Lesnar dropped a memory from his youth wrestling days that stopped people in their tracks. It was not a tale about medals, confidence, or loving the grind. It was about pressure.

Raw, uncomfortable, old-school pressure. According to Lesnar, if he did not win a little kids’ wrestling tournament, his mother would leave him there and make him figure out his own ride home.

That one line immediately turned the Brock Lesnar story into something bigger than a random viral clip. It became a window into the kind of environment that may have helped build the frightening competitive edge fans later saw in wrestling, MMA, and pro wrestling alike.

It is the sort of anecdote that sounds almost unreal in 2026, but it also explains a lot about why Lesnar has always carried himself like losing is not just unacceptable, but personal.

What Brock Lesnar Said On Spittin’ Chiclets

Lesnar did not dress the story up as some polished motivational speech. He told it like a memory that had clearly stuck with him for years.

Even my mom, my mom had so much expectations out of me. My mom, bless her heart, and I thank her to this day even. If I didn’t win a little kids’ wrestling tournament, she left me there to find my own ride. She was pissed, and I didn’t wanna ride home with her for three hours and in the backseat of that car — she just left me and I was like, ‘I can’t believe my mom. She left me here.’
– Brock Lesnar –

That quote is doing most of the work here because it is not vague. It is vivid. It is harsh. And it instantly creates a mental picture of a young Brock Lesnar realizing that second place was not just disappointing in his household — it came with consequences.

What makes this Brock Lesnar story hit even harder is that he did not tell it with resentment. He actually sounded grateful. That does not make the story less shocking, but it does show how Lesnar seems to process it: not as cruelty, but as one of the forces that toughened him up early.

Why This Brock Lesnar Story Blew Up So Fast

The reason this clip spread so quickly is simple: it collides with two very different ideas of sports parenting.

On one side, there is the old-school mentality that has always lived inside wrestling rooms, boxing gyms, and football locker rooms. Be tougher. Stop complaining.

Win or deal with the consequences. On the other side, there is the modern view that youth sports should build confidence, discipline, and resilience without crossing into fear or humiliation.

This Brock Lesnar story sits right in the middle of that collision. Some people hear it and think, “That explains the monster mentality.” Others hear it and think, “That is way too much pressure for a kid.” Both reactions make sense, which is why the quote has real staying power.

It also works because Lesnar is the one telling it. If this came from a lesser-known athlete, it might have passed as just another wild sports anecdote.

But Brock Lesnar is not just any former wrestler. He became a college wrestling champion, turned into a UFC heavyweight champion, and built one of the most terrifying personas the sports entertainment world has ever seen.

When somebody like that says he grew up under relentless expectations, people are going to connect the dots.

How Youth Wrestling Helped Build Brock Lesnar

Youth wrestling has always had a different reputation than many other kids’ sports. Even at the beginner level, it can feel unforgiving. There is nowhere to hide, no teammates to absorb blame, and no soft way to lose.

When a young athlete grows up in that environment with added pressure from home, it can produce a very specific kind of competitor.

That is what makes this Brock Lesnar story feel so revealing. It does not just explain that Lesnar was talented. It hints at why he became so emotionally wired for confrontation, control, and dominance.

His competitive style was never built around looking pretty or being liked. It was built around imposing himself and making sure there was no doubt about the result.

That mindset followed him everywhere. In amateur wrestling, it helped him rise fast. In MMA, it made him a terrifying physical problem the second he understood how to weaponize his explosiveness.

In pro wrestling, it became a full character in itself — the idea that Brock Lesnar was not entering a contest so much as arriving to ruin somebody’s night.

This is where the Brock Lesnar story becomes more than a viral headline. It starts to sound like an origin point. Not the whole explanation, because great athletes are always more complicated than one childhood moment. But definitely a piece of the puzzle.

The Thin Line Between Tough Love And Something Darker

The most interesting part of this story is not whether it sounds “soft” or “hard” by today’s standards. It is the bigger question underneath it: how much pressure creates greatness, and how much pressure leaves a mark?

Combat sports loves tough-love mythology. It always has. There is a deep cultural appetite for stories about brutal coaches, impossible expectations, and kids who grew up with no room for weakness.

The problem is that these stories are often celebrated only after the athlete makes it. If the athlete does not become Brock Lesnar, they usually sound a lot less inspiring.

Either way, it explains something real about Lesnar. The public has always seen the intimidating exterior, the freakish athleticism, and the aura that made opponents look beaten before the opening bell.

Now they have one more piece of the backstory. And it is a piece that feels perfectly on-brand: intense, uncomfortable, and impossible to ignore.

 

Coach Jackson Douglas Checkmat Fallout Turns Patch Dispute Into A Loyalty Fight

Coach Jackson Douglas Checkmat Fallout Turns Patch Dispute Into A Loyalty Fight
  • A Checkmat coach says he was pushed over teaching at a non-affiliated academy and then removed from Checkmat after a dispute that started at team headquarters.
  • The public version of events surrounding the public Jackson Douglas Checkmate dispute on team loyalty, affiliation rules, and a later explanation tied to not wearing a Checkmat patch.
  • Screenshots described in follow-up reporting appear to show Checkmat’s side framing the issue around discipline, mentality, and collective values rather than just a patch.
  • The bigger reason this story is hitting hard is simple: it touches one of modern Jiu-Jitsu’s most uncomfortable fault lines, where team identity collides with how instructors actually pay rent.

Jackson Douglas Checkmat is the kind of story that instantly gets people talking because the headline sounds almost petty, but the actual conflict underneath it is anything but.

Douglas, a black belt under Lucas Leite and a known Checkmat representative, says the split started over where he teaches, whether that academy should affiliate, and what loyalty to a major team is supposed to look like in real life.

And that is exactly why this has spread so quickly through the BJJ world. Checkmat is not some tiny local banner.

Its own affiliation material presents the team as a global network built around family, positivity, excellence, and support, with more than 200 schools and a formal pathway for academy owners to join the brand.

When a public dispute like this breaks out, it stops looking like a random gym misunderstanding and starts looking like a referendum on how affiliation culture actually works.

How Jackson Douglas Checkmat Blew Up

By Douglas’s account, the issue began during a visit to Checkmat HQ while he was discussing an internal tournament for his students.

He says Gleyce Kelly, wife of Leo Vieira, joined the conversation, asked where he was teaching, and then pressed him on the fact that the academy was not affiliated with Checkmat.

Douglas says he explained that the gym owner had no interest in affiliating with any team and that his students were largely recreational rather than serious competitors.

That did not end the disagreement. Douglas says he was told that maybe this had not been a rule before, but that it now needed to be looked at.

In his telling, the conversation quickly shifted from a basic question about where he teaches to a much bigger demand about where his loyalty was supposed to sit.

My answer was simple. How can I think long term if my rent is due next month? My car has to be paid. Real life.
– Jackson Douglas –

That quote is the whole story in miniature. On one side, you have the traditional team model: wear the patch, build the brand, teach inside the affiliation, strengthen the network.

On the other, you have the reality a lot of black belts live with in 2026: teaching jobs are fragmented, opportunities are not always inside one team, and idealism gets very expensive when bills are due.

Why Leo Vieira, Gleyce Kelly And The Patch Dispute Matter

Douglas says that by Sunday morning he had been removed from the team by Leo Vieira without a direct phone call, advance warning, or a conversation with his professor.

He also says the explanation later given to him was that he had not put the Checkmat patch on his Gi, a claim he rejects because he says he never even took the Gi out of his bag that day.

If that sounds like a strange way for a relationship to end, that is because the patch dispute does not feel like the real center of gravity here.

It feels more like the final trigger or the easiest explanation to package after the larger disagreement had already turned sour. The real heat is clearly around the non-affiliated academy, the perceived lack of team-first thinking, and the idea that a known representative should not be operating outside the affiliation structure.

That reading lines up with Checkmat’s own public emphasis on community, alignment, and official affiliation.

At the end of the day, this is how my story with Checkmat ends. No conversation. No respect. No transparency.
– Jackson Douglas –

That is strong language, and it is the kind of language that guarantees this will not stay inside private team chats for long.

The Patch Dispute Is Really About Money, Independence, And Checkmat Affiliation

The most interesting part of this story is that the public debate is already bigger than whether Douglas should have worn a patch or taught somewhere else.

The follow-up reporting around circulating group-chat screenshots suggests the team side framed the situation around discipline, teamwork, good character, and the belief that wearing team gear alone is not what makes someone part of the collective.

The same reporting says those messages described Checkmat as a team built on discipline, respect, responsibility, and commitment to something bigger than individual ego.

That matters, because it shows the two sides are not really arguing about the same thing. Douglas’s public stance is rooted in financial reality and inconsistent enforcement. The apparent team stance is rooted in standards, posture, and identity.

In other words, one side is asking, “How am I supposed to survive?” while the other is asking, “What does belonging actually require?

That question is not unique to Checkmat. It sits in the background of a lot of modern Jiu-Jitsu, especially now that more elite athletes also work as instructors, content creators, private coaches, and semi-independent contractors.

The old model of absolute team exclusivity still exists, but the economy around BJJ has changed faster than many loyalty expectations have.

Ezekiel to Glory Dinu Bucalet DVD Review [2026]

Ezekiel to Glory Dinu Bucalet DVD Review

Key Takeaways

  • The Ezekiel to Glory Dinu Bucalet DVD is a three-part closed guard instructional built around turning the Ezekiel choke into a full submission network rather than a one-off trick.
  • It focuses on posture control, pressure-based finishing, grip strategy, Gi and No-Gi adaptation, and chaining the Ezekiel into armbars, triangles, and back takes.
  • The structure is broader than the title suggests, because Bucalet also spends time on anti-passing details, defensive awareness, wristlocks, common counters, and getting to closed guard safely.
  • This looks best suited to grapplers who already play closed guard or want to make it far more threatening without relying on speed or flexibility.
  • Rating: 8/10

EZEKIEL TO GLORY DINU BUCALET DVD DOWNLOAD

The Ezekiel to Glory Dinu Bucalet DVD has a very clear pitch: make closed guard dangerous again, and do it through pressure, posture-breaking, and a submission chain built around the Ezekiel choke. That is a smart angle.

Too many closed guard instructionals either drift into generic attack from everywhere territory or lean so hard into flexibility and explosiveness that half the audience is left watching rather than learning. Here, the sales page positions the system as one built on control, calculated pressure, and predictable reactions, which is exactly how a strong closed guard should feel when it is working well.

The Ezekiel Choke is Fun!

There is a reason the closed guard never really disappears, even when the sport gets obsessed with leg locks, false-reap dilemmas, and the latest open guard micro-trend. Closed guard solves a very old problem in Jiu-Jitsu: how do you keep someone close enough that they have to deal with your grips, hips, and upper-body threats all at once?

When used well, it forces the top player into a small space where every posture change matters. That is also why the Ezekiel choke is such an interesting anchor for a guard system. It is a choke that punishes people for assuming they are safe just because they are on top.

It does not need a ton of space, it creates urgency fast, and even when it does not finish cleanly it tends to make people expose arms, neck, and posture. In practical terms, that makes it ideal as a chain starter.

The catch, of course, is that the Ezekiel can become low-percentage if it is taught as a surprise move instead of a structured attack. That is where this instructional seems to make its case. Rather than promising magic, it appears to emphasize the boring-but-important things that make any closed guard submission work: posture denial, grip mechanics, angle discipline, and forcing reactions instead of chasing them.

About Dinu Bucalet

Dinu Bucalet is a Romanian-born BJJ black belt who received his black belt from Nick Brooks in 2019. He is also an MMA fighter and coach with a background in boxing and kickboxing, plus a certified physical trainer.

An Ezekiel choke-centered closed guard system works best when it is taught by someone who understands pressure, hand fighting, posture breaking, and how to make compact attacks work under resistance. Put together, that gives the instruction a believable teacher profile. He is not just a guy with a choke. He reads like someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about pressure and how to funnel people into bad reactions.

Bucalet’s results also include titles such as ADCC Spanish National Champion in 2022, Paris Open IBJJF No-Gi champion in 2022, and IBJJF European No-Gi Brown champion in 2018. One more detail adds a bit of flavor here: Bucalet was named Romania’s MMA Fighter of the Year for his 2013 results, when he reportedly went 3-0 in professional MMA with all wins coming by first-round finish.

Ezekiel to Glory Dinu Bucalet DVD Review

What I like straight away is that this does not appear to treat the Ezekiel as a novelty. The promise is not here is one sneaky choke. The promise is that the choke becomes the centerpiece of a larger attacking framework that includes posture control, traps, chained finishes, and ways to keep the top player from settling into safe defensive habits.

Volume 1 – What Not To Do

The first volume of the Ezekiel to Glory Dinu Bucalet DVD looks like the real foundation layer. The chapter titles are not glamorous, but that is a good sign. Bucalet opens with posture themes, what not to do, what to stop the opponent from doing, and then moves into dealing with specific passing problems like the closed guard smash pass and the Sao Paulo pass, while also covering long legs, high hips, and lapel use.

That tells you a lot about the teaching philosophy. Before he wants you hunting Ezekiels, he wants you understanding the kind of upper-body behavior that makes closed guard function at all. That is exactly the right order. A lot of people fail from closed guard not because their submissions are bad, but because they never really establish the conditions needed for good offense.

I also like that this section seems to address body-type variables early. Dealing with long legs and high hips is the sort of topic that usually determines whether an instructional feels practical or generic. Closed guard always changes a bit depending on your build and your opponent’s posture habits.

Volume 2 – Throwing in Wristlocks

Volume 2 is where the Ezekiel to Glory Dinu Bucalet DVD gets more eclectic. The chapter list includes wristlocks from a bunch of closed guard scenarios. On paper, that can look slightly scattered. In practice, I think it makes sense if you view this volume as the problem-solving and trap-building section.

Closed guard offense becomes much more dangerous once you can punish defensive hands, trap an arm cleanly, and remain calm when the top player starts firing back with stack pressure, guillotines, or collar chokes. The wristlock angle is especially interesting. Even if you never become a big wristlocker, the threat alone can make people hide their hands badly, which opens cleaner access to neck attacks and upper-body isolation.

The Kimura-to-arm-trap connection also fits the main theme well. It gives the system another way to create the reaction loop that a strong Ezekiel game needs. This is probably the least purely on-brand volume, but it may end up being the most useful for real rolling. Not every match turns into the clean attacking picture you want. Good instructionals account for the mess.

Volume 3 – Ezekiel Time

Volume 3 is where the Ezekiel to Glory Dinu Bucalet DVD cashes the check the title writes. The chapter titles move directly into “It’s Ezekiel Time” in two parts, then cover what happens when the opponent blocks the choke, combining attacks, posturing up, advice for competing, takedowns that put you in closed guard, and what to do if someone pulls closed guard.

That is a very sensible finishing volume. By this point, the instructional seems to assume you understand the platform and the reactions. Now the Ezekiel gets expanded into a true decision tree. If a closed guard instructional does not address the obvious defensive response, it is not really teaching a system.

I also like the inclusion of competitive advice and entries into closed guard. Those topics help the material travel from theory into actual match use. A lot of players love closed guard conceptually but never get there consistently under pressure.

Giving attention to takedowns that land you there, and to situations where the other person pulls closed guard, makes the course feel a bit more complete and less like a pure submission seminar.

Start Getting More Ezekiels

The Ezekiel to Glory Dinu Bucalet instructional looks best used in blocks rather than binged once and forgotten. Volume 1 should probably become your drilling and positional-sparring template for a few weeks: posture breaking, foot and hip engagement, and anti-pass reactions first. Then go tackle the problem-solving layer from Volume 2, and only after that try the final part stuff as your main live-round focus.

For most grapplers, the most realistic way to use this is to build one reliable entry into the Ezekiel, one secondary trap when the opponent blocks, and one fallback attack when posture changes.

That is enough to make your closed guard feel radically better without trying to memorize every chapter at once. Coaches will probably like it too, because the product page explicitly frames it as something useful for structured guard curricula, and the chapter layout supports that idea.

EZEKIEL TO GLORY DINU BUCALET DVD AVAILABLE HERE

Who Is This For?

The Ezekiel to Glory Dinu Bucalet DVD should appeal most to blue belts and up, along with ambitious white belts who already understand the basic job of closed guard. The sales copy also points toward competitors, smaller practitioners who rely more on technique than strength, coaches, and anyone tired of having their closed guard stalled out.

I do not think brand-new white belts will get the full value immediately, mostly because posture management and reaction chaining make more sense once you have already failed with closed guard a few hundred times. But for the average hobbyist who likes upper-body attacks, and for competitors who want a tighter, pressure-first submission hub from bottom, this looks highly relevant.

Gi-only players should still find value because the system includes Gi and No-Gi variations. Pure open-guard specialists may not love the style, but that is more a matter of taste than quality. If you dislike closed guard on principle, this course probably will not convert you overnight. If you already believe in it, though, it looks like a smart expansion.

Pros & Potential Drawbacks

Pros:

  • Strong central idea: the Ezekiel is treated as a system anchor, not a gimmick.
  • Good foundational emphasis on posture, frames, pressure, and anti-passing work before the submission layer.
  • Includes Gi and No-Gi adaptation, which widens the audience.
  • The chapter structure suggests realistic troubleshooting instead of fantasy-technique collecting.
  • Useful for both individual study and curriculum building, especially for coaches who teach closed guard in stages.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Part 2 may feel a bit broad if you expected wall-to-wall Ezekiel content from start to finish.
  • Grapplers who rarely play closed guard may need time before the system feels natural.

It’s Ezekiel Time!

The Ezekiel to Glory Dinu Bucalet DVD looks like a well-thought-out closed guard instructional with a narrow title but a broader, more useful structure underneath. It promises a pressure-based Ezekiel system, and the chapter list suggests Bucalet understands that such a system only works when it is supported by posture control, arm trapping, defensive awareness, and clear reactions.

Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD Review [2026]

Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD Review

Key Takeaways

  • The Quarter Outside Guard System Wolfgang Heindel DVD is a compact but clearly structured guard instructional built around angle control, off-balancing, and practical sweep chains rather than flashy movement.
  • It is a four-volume release that focuses heavily on base position, retention, sweeps, standing reactions, and multiple entries into the quarter outside guard, with material that applies to both Gi and No-Gi players.
  • The best part of this instructional is that it treats the position like a full system instead of a handful of isolated tricks, which makes it easier to plug into an existing bottom game.
  • The tradeoff is that it feels more like a specialist’s toolkit than a broad guard encyclopedia, so some grapplers will want more detail on submissions and longer troubleshooting sequences.
  • Rating: 7.5/10

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The Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD is the kind of instructional that will immediately appeal to grapplers who are tired of hearing that every useful open guard must involve huge inversions, elite flexibility, or endless complexity.

Wolfgang Heindel presents the quarter outside guard as a practical bottom position built on structure, angle control, and forcing reactions, rather than on athletic fireworks. The Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD is not trying to sell you on the idea of a trendy position. It is trying to show you a coherent guard layer that can sit between half guard, lapel work, knee-shield variations, and recovery-based transitions.

After going through the structure of the course, I think this instructional delivers useful ideas, especially for intermediate grapplers who already enjoy bottom play and want something a little off the beaten path without going fully into modern acrobatics. It is solid, smart, and usable, even if it does not quite feel like a must-have release for everyone.

The Guard of Last Resort? 

Quarter guard is an interesting fit for modern Jiu-Jitsu because it lives in a sweet spot many instructionals ignore. It is not as static as old-school half guard, but it is also not as commitment-heavy as some of the more inversion-driven outside guards.

That makes it attractive for people who want to create angles, expose balance problems, and connect to sweeps without constantly gambling on speed. In practical terms, positions like this matter because they help bottom players solve a common problem: how to stay dangerous without opening themselves up too much while chasing movement.

A lot of grapplers understand how to retain, and a lot understand how to attack once a position is already established, but fewer know how to live in that in-between range where you are disrupting base, redirecting pressure, and forcing the top player to post or retreat. That is the zone where the quarter guard can become valuable.

What I like about the concept behind the Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD is that it leans into structure over spectacle. Heindel’s sales copy explicitly emphasizes that the system does not rely on explosive inversions or flexibility, but on intelligent connection and angle control. That is exactly the kind of positioning many hobbyists, masters competitors, and technical guard players actually need.

You do not have to be a scrambly young phenom to get mileage from a guard if the mechanics are built around strong wedges, predictable reactions, and disciplined transitions. The bigger strategic appeal is that this type of guard can help bridge other parts of your game. If you already use deep half, Z-guard, knee shield, or lapel-based control, then a quarter outside layer can act like connective tissue rather than a standalone identity.

That gives the instructional a practical ceiling: it is not just about learning a weird position for its own sake, but about making your existing guard game harder to read.

Wolfgang Heindel

Wolfgang Heindel is a far more credible instructor than casual readers might first assume. He is a third-degree BJJ black belt who received his black belt in 2014 from Aldo “Caveirinha” Januário, and it highlights notable competitive results including JJIF silver in 2011, IBJJF European bronze in 2013, AJP Worlds silver in 2021, and JJIF world gold in 2024.

Beyond that, the available biographical material shows a broad martial arts background. Heindel began with judo, later competed in fighting Ju-Jitsu at a high level, won JJIF world gold in 2004, and later built a significant Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competition resum. He discovered BJJ in Rio de Janeiro in 2002.

Why does that matter for the Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD? Because this is not a random specialist throwing together a novelty position. Heindel looks like a coach with deep cross-disciplinary mat time, real competition experience, and years of teaching.

Quarter Outside Guard System Wolfgang Heindel DVD Review

The Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD is a four-volume instructional sold as a complete system for off-balancing, sweeps, entries, and defensive adjustments from the quarter outside guard. It runs a bit over 100 minutes in total, so this is not a giant encyclopedia.

Instead, it is a fairly concise release that tries to stay focused. The course content emphasizes the core mechanics of the position, angle control, high-percentage sweeps, transitions to other guards, and defensive responses to common counters.

Volume 1 – Base Position Quarter Guard

The first volume of the Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD lays down the actual attacking identity of the position. Chapters include details on the base position, as well as attacks featuring underhook sweeps, feed lapel sweep, and rolling sweeps.

Heindel clearly wants to establish the position before racing into offense. He is not limiting the guard to one reaction pattern. You get lower-body based kuzushi, grip-assisted sweeps, lapel involvement for the Gi, and transitional options that suggest the position remains useful even once the top player starts trying to square up or dogfight out.

I like this section because it appears to teach the guard as something that can create layered dilemmas rather than a single trick. From a review standpoint, this is probably the strongest part of the instructional. It offers the core identity of the system and gives enough variety to make the position feel alive.

Volume 2 – Retention & Recovery

Part two shifts the conversation from offense to survival and retention. The listed chapters include blocking the underhook, blocking the crossface, dealing with both together, guillotine and Darce danger, recovering crossface, recovering underhook, recovering both, and knee-on-belly recovery.

This is exactly where a lot of guard instructionals either get lazy or lose value. It is easy to sell sweeps. It is harder to explain how a position survives the ugly moments when someone is pressuring in the right direction. On paper, this section is one of the better signs in the Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD because Heindel does not pretend the position only exists when everything is going well.

The inclusion of front headlock threats and flattening pressure makes this section especially relevant. Guard positions only matter if you can recognize the danger points early. For me, that retention focus is one of the biggest reasons the DVD earns a respectable rating instead of falling into gimmick territory.

Volume 3 – Sweeps

The third volume broadens the attacking web again. The content list includes lapel arm sweeps, deep half follow-ups, Z-guard and knee-shield follow-ups, several back-step counters, and sweeps against standing opponents using pants grip and head block variations.

This is where the Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD starts feeling more like a system. I especially like the inclusion of deep half and Z-guard follow-ups. That suggests Heindel understands the position in context, not in isolation.

Most people do not need a brand-new game. They need a new connection that makes their existing game more coherent. The standing-opponent material is also a good sign. Too many bottom instructionals feel useful only until the passer changes posture and distance. By including responses to standing reactions, Heindel at least acknowledges the real rhythm of live rolling.

Volume 4 – Entries

The final piece is built around entries and system development. The product page lists entries from knee cut, direct pull, deep half, failed back push, collar drag, and mount escape, followed by chapters titled develop core, opponent attack, opponent react, complete, and outro.

This is a smart way to close the instructional. By this point, the Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD has already shown what the guard looks like when it is working and how to keep it alive under pressure. Finishing with entries matters because it answers the question every good instructional should answer: how do I actually get there on purpose?

The mount-escape and deep-half entries stand out most to me because they make the system feel more broadly useful. That kind of integration makes the position easier to adopt in live training. I appreciate the organization, but some grapplers may want more extensive troubleshooting or more live-application examples.

Adding the Quarter Guard to Your Game

The best way to use the Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD is not to binge it and then hope the position appears by magic during sparring. This looks like a course that should be studied in layers. Start by isolating the base position and one or two sweeps from volume one. Then spend a week or two forcing those entries in positional rounds. After that, add the retention answers from volume two, because that is what will keep the guard alive under pressure.

For hobbyists, that makes the instructional more realistic than a lot of sprawling eight-hour products. You can actually work through it without feeling buried. For competitors, the value is different: this is more of a sharpen-the-edges resource than a total-game rebuild. It can add an awkward, technical bottom layer that many opponents may not see often, especially if your current game already includes half guard or lapel-based control.

I would not recommend trying to install every part at once. The Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD seems most useful when treated as a system of reactions. Pick an entry, build the base position, learn one sweep and one retention answer, then let the rest grow from there. That is the sort of position that tends to stick.

GET NOW: QUARTER OUTSIDEGUARD WOLFGANG HEINDEL DVD

Who Is This For?

The clearest audience for the Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD is probably solid white belts through brown belts who already enjoy playing from the bottom and want a more technical outside-angle guard without needing a hyper-mobile style.

It should work especially well for half guard players who want another adjacent layer, Gi players who like lapel-assisted off-balancing, No-Gi grapplers who value angle control over explosive inversion, masters competitors and hobbyists looking for a structured, lower-risk way to stay offensive, and coaches who want to expose students to a less common but connected guard system.

The people who may get less out of it are complete beginners with no guard retention foundation and grapplers who want a submission-heavy open guard course first and foremost. The Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD does mention submission pathways and offensive threats, but the appeal here is much more about control, imbalance, and sweep structure than about flashy finishing sequences.

Pros & Potential Drawbacks

Pros:

  • System-based approach rather than random techniques. The Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD clearly tries to organize the position around base, retention, follow-ups, and entries, which makes it easier to learn in context.
  • Useful balance between offense and defense. Volume two’s emphasis on crossface, underhook, and front-headlock danger gives the guard more practical value than a sweep-only product.
  • Works across Gi and No-Gi. That alone boosts the usefulness for grapplers who train both formats.
  • Good connective tissue with other guards. The deep half, Z-guard, knee-shield, and entry material helps the position fit into a real game instead of existing as an isolated curiosity.
  • Accessible emphasis on structure over athleticism. Many readers will appreciate a guard system that does not demand elite flexibility or constant inversion.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Relatively narrow subject matter. If you are not interested in building around this exact guard family, the instructional may feel too specialized.
  • Shorter runtime means less exhaustive troubleshooting. At just over 100 minutes, the Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel instructional stays focused, but some buyers may want deeper scenario coverage.

You Only Need a Quarter

The Quarter Outside Guard Wolfgang Heindel DVD is a smart, well-targeted instructional that does a good job of making an underused position feel logical and trainable. Its biggest strength is that it treats the quarter outside guard like a real system: you get core positioning, sweep options, retention answers, follow-up connections, and multiple entries instead of a loose pile of moves.

Tye Ruotolo Guard Pulling Rant Lights Up BJJ After Gritty Title Defense

Tye Ruotolo Guard Pulling Rant Lights Up BJJ After Gritty Title Defense
  • Tye Ruotolo retained the ONE Welterweight Submission Grappling World Title with a unanimous decision win over Pawel Jaworski at ONE Fight Night 41 on March 13 in Bangkok.
  • The 23-year-old admitted afterward that he felt rusty and suggested his growing MMA focus may have affected his sharpness.
  • His post-fight comments then turned into a much bigger talking point when he blasted passive guard pulling and stagnant 50/50 exchanges as bad viewing for fans.
  • More than a throwaway joke, the Tye Ruotolo guard pulling rant sounded like a champion publicly calling out one of modern Jiu-Jitsu’s biggest image problems.

The Tye Ruotolo guard pulling rant landed almost as hard as his opening spear at ONE Fight Night 41. Ruotolo got the result he needed, leaving Bangkok with his belt still around his waist after a unanimous decision over IBJJF No-Gi World Champion Pawel Jaworski.

But instead of acting like everything was perfect, he used the moment to say what a lot of competitors, promoters, and viewers have been circling around for years: some elite Jiu-Jitsu is incredibly technical, and still painfully hard to watch.

That is why this story has legs beyond one post-fight soundbite. Ruotolo did not complain after losing. He said it after winning, after defending a world title for the third time, and after being pushed into exactly the kind of leg-lock-heavy, patient battle that often splits hardcore grapplers from casual fans.

Why The Tye Ruotolo Guard Pulling Rant Blew Up

What makes the Tye Ruotolo guard pulling rant hit harder is that he was not dismissing technique. In fact, he went out of his way to praise Jaworski’s skill. His issue was with what that style can look like under bright lights, especially when long stretches of a match turn into seated guard movement, cautious leg entanglements, and stalled 50/50 positions.

<h5 class=”custom-quote”>I felt a little rusty in there, honestly.<br>– Tye Ruotolo –</h5>

That honesty mattered. Ruotolo was not trying to sell the audience on a flawless performance. He was saying, in plain terms, that he knew the match was not as sharp or explosive as he wanted it to be.

From there, his criticism of passive guard play came off less like cheap trash talk and more like a top champion judging himself by entertainment value as well as results.

What Happened At ONE Fight Night 41 Against Pawel Jaworski

The match itself helps explain why the comments resonated. Ruotolo opened aggressively, even bouncing off the ropes and driving into Jaworski with a spear-like takedown attempt.

From there, the bout settled into the kind of scrambly leg-lock battle many expected, with Jaworski repeatedly hunting the legs and Ruotolo trying to stay composed, escape danger, and work his way into stronger top positions.

By the end of the 10-minute contest, both men had recorded one catch apiece. Jaworski briefly threatened with a kneebar late, Ruotolo answered with his own mounted choke attack and then chased a triangle as time ran out, and the judges sided with the defending champion because of his pace and aggression across the full match.

It was a legitimate, competitive title defense, just not the kind of viral submission finish people often expect from a Ruotolo fight.

That detail matters because Ruotolo’s reputation has been built on pressure, movement, and a constant hunt for the finish. When even he ends up in a match that feels more tactical than thrilling, the debate around guard pulling stops being theoretical and starts looking structural.

Why 50/50 And Butt Scooters Trigger So Much Backlash

There is a reason 50/50 and butt scooters instantly spark arguments in No-Gi circles. To serious grapplers, these positions can be full of real danger, timing, and hidden traps.

To everyone else, they can look like two elite athletes canceling each other out while the clock keeps moving. Ruotolo’s criticism went straight at that gap between technical depth and visual excitement.

He was also careful not to say the style was fake or ineffective. His point was narrower, and sharper: the sport may be drifting toward matches that are harder to “digest” for viewers, especially on major platforms that want action, momentum, and clear drama.

That is a very different complaint from old-school “real Jiu-Jitsu” grumbling. It is a product complaint, not just a purist one.

<h5 class=”custom-quote”>It’s a show, it’s all about doing your best to put on a show.<br>– Tye Ruotolo –</h5>

That one line may be the real center of the story. Ruotolo is not only trying to win. He is clearly aware that grappling at the highest level now lives inside an entertainment ecosystem, especially in ONE, where submission grappling sits on cards alongside striking and MMA.

Is Tye Criticizing Strategy Or Saving The Show?

Probably both. The Tye Ruotolo guard pulling rant works because it sits in the uncomfortable middle. He is not wrong that passive exchanges can kill momentum. Jaworski was also not wrong to bring a game that made life miserable for a champion who admitted he felt off his usual pace.

That is the tension. The most effective strategy is not always the most watchable one, and promotions have been trying to solve that problem for years through rule sets, judging emphasis, and matchmaking.

Ruotolo’s own career makes him a particularly strong messenger for this point. He and Kade have been competing since childhood, and Tye said even with more attention shifting toward MMA, he expects them to stay near the top in Jiu-Jitsu because it is “all we’ve ever known.”

That gives his criticism extra weight. This is not an outsider sneering at guard play. It is one of the sport’s most bankable homegrown stars saying the current version of elite grappling sometimes undersells itself.

Why This Fight Over Jiu-Jitsu’s Identity Is Just Getting Louder

The Tye Ruotolo guard pulling rant is really a warning shot about where pro grappling goes next. If champions, promotions, and viewers all want matches that reward action, then the sport will keep facing pressure to steer away from long, static exchanges that only specialists love.

If it does not, moments like this will keep surfacing every time a major bout turns into a technical stalemate.

Ruotolo still won. He still defended his title. But the thing people may remember most is not the decision. It is that one of Jiu-Jitsu’s biggest young stars walked out of a successful night and basically said the sport has a watchability problem.

Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD Review [2026]

Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD Review

Key Takeaways

  • A Gi-focused passing instructional built around fundamentals rather than endless move collecting.
  • Best suited to grapplers who want a reliable pressure-passing framework with clear decisions from closed guard, De La Riva, half guard, seated guard, spider lasso, and inversion-heavy exchanges.
  • The biggest strength is how the material keeps circling back to posture, pressure, balance, hook control, and clean transitions instead of flashy detours.
  • It looks especially useful for people who already like knee cuts, over-under style passing, and Marcelo’s compact, efficient style of Jiu-Jitsu.
  • Rating: 9/10

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The Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD does exactly what the title suggests: it tries to strip guard passing down to the stuff that actually survives live rounds. Marcelo does not appear interested in turning this into a giant encyclopedia of trendy passing variations. Instead, he frames the instructional around posture, timing, pressure, balance, and a handful of core passing routes that connect naturally to one another. That makes the Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD feel much more like a system than a random collection of techniques.

That is a smart approach for guard passing, because passing is where too many instructionals lose the plot. They show ten answers to ten different guards, but never really explain why one choice is better than another in motion. Marcelo’s product description points in the opposite direction.

Why Fundamental Guard Passing Still Matters

Guard passing is one of those subjects that never stops mattering, no matter how modern the sport gets. New guards appear, grips get weirder, inversion chains get sharper, and people become better at threatening the back or the legs in transition. But passing still comes down to a few stubborn truths: posture has to be right, your weight has to be meaningful, your feet cannot drift into danger, and your decisions have to come early enough that you are not always reacting late.

That is why a fundamentals-heavy Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD makes sense in 2026. Marcelo’s style has always been a useful antidote to overcomplication. He was never the guy who needed fifteen setup layers to make something work. He usually took a strong mechanical idea, then sharpened the timing until it felt inescapable. For guard passing, that mindset is gold.

The other thing I like about a release like this is the breadth of the problem-solving. On paper, this is not just closed guard passing or half guard passing. It starts with opening the closed guard, then moves through a Gi guard passing system that touches De La Riva, seated guard, half guard, spider lasso, and inverted reactions. That is broad enough to be useful without becoming bloated. It suggests Marcelo is teaching the reader how to keep moving through common roadblocks rather than just winning one isolated exchange.

Marcelo Garcia’s Undeniable Credibility

Marcelo Garcia does not need much help selling a passing instructional. The man is widely regarded as one of the greatest pound-for-pound grapplers ever, with major success in both Gi and No-Gi competition.

He is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under Fabio Gurgel, competed under the Alliance banner, won five IBJJF World titles as a black belt, and won ADCC four times. He is a Hall of Famer and has a long track record as both a competitor and teacher. That matters here because guard passing is not a topic where reputation alone is enough.

Plenty of elite competitors can pass, but not all of them can explain why they pass well. Marcelo’s teaching reputation has been strong for years, and the official product description leans into the idea that this set is about making decisions simpler rather than dumping endless information on the viewer. For a subject as messy as passing, that is exactly the right angle.

Full Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD Review

The Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD is built on simple, high-percentage decisions for Gi training, and the five-part layout backs that up. If you are looking for a fundamentals-first Marcelo Garcia instructional review, this one immediately looks promising.

Volume 1 – Closed Guard Fundamentals & Breaks

The first volume of the Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD starts where it should: the closed guard. Marcelo covers hand control, standing press-style guard breaks, collar-lift variations, underhook-lift options, and combinations between them. He also includes details like clearing an underhooked leg with a heel sit, using a bicep stomp against closed guard, and maintaining posture and stance against a jumping closed guard.

What I like about this opening section is that it sets the tone for the whole instructional. Marcelo is not pretending guard passing begins when your opponent opens up and gives you movement. He starts with the annoying part first: staying organized, denying the guard player easy off-balancing, and opening things in a way that preserves your structure.

That gives the rest of the set a cleaner foundation. For a lot of grapplers, especially those who rush past the closed guard breaks part of passing study, this may end up being one of the most useful volumes in the whole release.

Volume 2 – Core Passing System

Part two is where Marcelo starts showing the backbone of the passing style: kick back pass, knee cut pass, folding pass, folding pass to mount, plus defensive structure against De La Riva rotation through shin blocking, base, and balance. This is really the volume that tells you what kind of passer this instructional is building.

There is a strong practical feel to this section. The techniques listed are not exotic, and that is a compliment. The knee cut alone is one of the most useful entries into an entire passing game, and pairing it with kick back and folding options gives the viewer a compact but realistic set of answers. The Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD seems strongest when it lives in this lane: clear mechanics, tight transitions, and choices that good pressure passers can plug into sparring fast.

Volume 3 – De La Riva Passing & Transitions

The third volume shifts into De La Riva passing, and this is where the system gets more layered. Marcelo works off mounting the free De La Riva leg and then branching into leg-over passes, knee cuts, full mount, cross-body knee cuts, and over-under passing.

He also addresses clearing the DLR hook, resetting with a back step, back-step passing, and using the reverse underhook to continue into half guard pressure or even a back take. This is a very Marcelo-like section because it does not treat De La Riva as a separate universe. Instead, it treats DLR reactions as another place where posture, leg positioning, and weight can create a chain of familiar passing outcomes.

That is a big selling point. A lot of people freeze against DLR because they view it as a technical maze. Marcelo seems to frame it more like an entry point into pressure and transitions, which is a much calmer and more useful way to think about it.

Volume 4 – Hook Control & Half Guard Passing

Part four continues the theme of simplification through control. Marcelo covers pinning hooks into an inverted vault pass, leg-over pass, and direct guard pass, then moves into over-under passing versus seated guard, underhook pummeling against half guard, reverse underhook passing, a half guard back take, and a reverse overhook pass.

This is the section where the Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD starts to feel especially complete. It is not just a way to beat one hook. It is more like Marcelo is teaching you what to do once your opponent’s hooks are no longer active enough to dictate the exchange.

That is the kind of detail that helps people actually pass in rounds. The half guard passing material also looks especially valuable because it connects cleanly to the earlier passing routes instead of feeling bolted on.

Volume 5 – Advanced Passing & Guard Clearing

The last part widens the net without losing the theme. Marcelo includes near-underhook to cross-body knee cut from half guard, arm trap and head control against half guard frames, spider lasso clearing, deep spider lasso hook clearing, pummeling to North-South versus inverted guard, knee-pin passing against inversion, stacked knee-pin to knee cut, hook-countering into kick back chase, and details on clearing your foot while passing half guard.

This is a strong closing volume because it addresses the kinds of complications that usually make a fundamentals instructional feel incomplete. Spider lasso, inversion, and tricky framing sequences are exactly where many pressure passers start losing rhythm. Marcelo does not appear to abandon the core system here. He extends it.

That makes the whole release feel coherent, and it is a big reason I would rate the Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD highly. It stays grounded even when the problems get more modern and annoying.

Training Like at Marcelo’s

From a training standpoint, the Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD looks like something you can study in phases without getting overwhelmed. A smart way to use it would be to treat Volume 1 as its own study block, then build the core passing routes from Volumes 2 and 3 before layering in the hook control and late-stage troubleshooting from Volumes 4 and 5.

This is not the kind of instructional I would binge once and then expect to “have.” It looks much better suited for focused rounds. Pick one guard break, one primary pass, and one reaction chain. Then isolate them. For example, start from closed guard and work to the standing break. Start from DLR and work only the mount-the-free-leg sequence. Start from half guard and focus on the underhook pummel into reverse underhook pathways.

That is also why I think the release has strong long-term value. It is not built around novelty. It is built around reusable mechanics. The better your room gets, the more useful that tends to be.

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Who Is This For?

The ideal audience for the Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD is probably broad, but not identical across all belts.

Early white belts can benefit from the emphasis on posture, stance, and simple passing routes, especially if they train in the Gi and keep getting stalled inside closed guard. Blue belts and purple belts may get the most immediate return because they usually know a few passes already but need help connecting them into a real system. Brown belts and black belts are likely to appreciate the refinement angle, especially the transitions through DLR, half guard, and inversion-heavy scenarios.

It is also a very good fit for grapplers who prefer pressure and control over loose movement passing. If you love forcing reactions, pinning hooks, and moving toward knee cuts, over-under, mounts, and back takes, the material should feel intuitive. Pure No-Gi specialists, though, should remember this is explicitly marketed as a Gi instructional, so it is not really trying to be an all-purpose modern passing course for every ruleset.

Pros & Potential Drawbacks

Pros:

  • Strong fundamentals-first structure. The instructional appears to care more about repeatable mechanics than flashy variety, which usually ages better.
  • Excellent positional spread. It does not stop at one guard; it addresses closed guard, DLR, seated guard, half guard, spider lasso, and inverted reactions.
  • Connected passing routes. The system seems built around linked decisions rather than isolated techniques, which is a major plus for actual sparring.
  • High-percentage emphasis. Knee cuts, over-under ideas, folding passes, hook pinning, and reverse underhook work are exactly the kind of staples most grapplers need more of.
  • Marcelo’s style suits teaching. Efficiency, compact movement, and clear positional priorities make this a very coachable topic for him.
  • Useful for a wide skill range. Beginners can learn structure, while advanced players can sharpen details and transitions.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Not a style buffet. If you want a massive menu of loose, speed-based, or highly modern outside passing variations, this may feel narrower than you want.
  • Gi-specific focus. No-Gi-only grapplers will still find concepts they can use, but the product is clearly designed around Gi training.
  • Less appealing to highlight hunters. People who buy instructionals mainly for novelty may find the fundamentals-heavy approach less exciting than it is effective.

World-Class Passing

The Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD looks like the kind of instructional that should hold up well because it is built on durable ideas. Marcelo is not trying to impress the viewer with complexity. He is trying to make passing cleaner, calmer, and more systematic. For a subject that often becomes chaotic fast, that is exactly the right teaching choice.

The set covers a lot of common passing problems, but it still feels anchored to a clear identity: posture first, pressure with purpose, smart transitions, and direct solutions against hooks and frames. If you train in the Gi and want a passing set that can actually become part of your game, the Guard Passing Essentials Marcelo Garcia DVD looks very worth your attention.

BJJ Coach Threatens to Revoke Athlete Visa After SA Police Report as Craig Jones Issues Brutal Warning

BJJ Coach Threatens to Revoke Athlete Visa After SA Police Report as Craig Jones Issues Brutal Warning
  • Craig Jones publicly called out an unnamed BJJ coach over an allegation that the coach threatened to cancel an athlete’s visa after she spoke to police about an alleged sexual assault tied to the academy.
  • Jones’ warning was not vague. He directly addressed the use of visa leverage, religious posturing, and the broader culture of silence that has haunted parts of Jiu-Jitsu for years.
  • The message also pushed attention toward the newly visible Open Guard Foundation, which says it exists to promote safety, fairness, and accountability in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
  • What makes the BJJ Coach Threatens to Revoke Athlete Visa story hit harder is not just the allegation itself, but the power dynamic behind it: immigration status can become a weapon if an athlete’s future is tied to a coach or gym.

A story like this was always going to explode, but BJJ Coach Threatens to Revoke Athlete Visa is the kind of phrase that lands differently even in a sport that has seen too many ugly headlines lately.

This was not a petty gym dispute, a social-media slap fight, or another round of vagueposting. The allegation at the center of Craig Jones’ public warning was that a coach threatened an athlete’s visa status after she went to police about an alleged sexual assault connected to the academy.

That is the sort of claim that instantly moves the conversation out of the usual BJJ gossip lane and into something much darker. It is not just about what allegedly happened inside a gym. It is about what happens next when power, loyalty, money, immigration status, and fear all get mixed together under one roof.

BJJ Coach Threatens to Revoke Athlete Visa And Craig Jones Fires Back

Jones addressed the unnamed coach in a video that was sharp, direct, and clearly designed to make sure nobody missed the point. He did not publicly identify the coach, but he did frame the alleged behavior as something far bigger than one bad decision.

If you’re a coach threatening to cancel an athlete visa because she spoke to the police about a sexual assault connected to your academy, understand this, you might be able to cancel a visa. That is your legal right. But, if you’re a fan of Jesus, and I know you are, what is done in the dark will be brought to the light. And in this sport, actions like this have a funny way of following you, sometimes even into the next generation. So before you make that decision, I’d tread f***ing carefully.
– Craig Jones –

That quote is why this story caught fire so fast. Jones did not just condemn the alleged threat. He went after the moral contradiction inside it. In effect, he framed the alleged visa pressure as both an abuse of power and an attempt to hide behind religion while doing it.

That is strong language, but this is a strong accusation. And in Jiu-Jitsu, where coaches often control access to competition, affiliation, sponsorship, housing, and immigration pathways, the idea of using visa dependence as leverage is about as sinister as it gets.

Open Guard Foundation And The Bigger Accountability Push

The timing also matters. Jones used the moment to direct attention toward the Open Guard Foundation, a newly visible initiative presenting itself as a support and accountability resource inside the sport. Its messaging is blunt: protect the art, support people who need help, and stop pretending these stories are isolated freak incidents.

That matters because for years, one of BJJ’s biggest weaknesses has been the gap between outrage and infrastructure. A scandal breaks, people post angry captions, teams issue carefully worded statements, and then the sport moves on.

What the Open Guard Foundation seems to be trying to build is something more practical than that: education, resources, community dialogue, and direct support for people who feel trapped.

That is a much bigger development than it might look on first glance. If the foundation gains traction, it could give athletes and students somewhere to turn outside the usual academy chain of command. In a sport where the coach is often treated like mentor, boss, gatekeeper, and family patriarch all at once, that outside lane matters.

Why Visa Leverage Is Such A Dirty Weapon In Jiu-Jitsu

This is the part of the story that makes it feel especially ugly. A visa is not just paperwork. For an international athlete, it can mean training access, income, housing, legal status, future competition plans, and in some cases an entire life built around the gym.

So when the allegation is that a coach may have threatened to revoke that status after a police report, the message behind it is obvious: speak up, and you could lose everything.

That is why this story is bigger than one academy and bigger than one unnamed coach. It exposes one of the sport’s least discussed pressure points. Jiu-Jitsu is global now. Talented athletes move countries to train, teach, and compete.

That creates opportunity, but it also creates vulnerability. If a coach controls not just mat time but legal standing, the room for intimidation gets much wider.

And once that pressure exists, the silence around abuse becomes easier to understand. Not acceptable. Not excusable. But easier to understand.

Why This Story Won’t Stay Quiet

The reason a BJJ coach threatens to revoke athlete visa will keep getting attention is simple: it touches a nerve the sport can no longer pretend is not there. BJJ has spent years selling the idea of family, trust, and character-building.

When allegations like this emerge, the damage is not limited to one gym. It hits the entire image of the art.

That is also why recent institutional statements about safety and abusive behavior now feel more important than ever. Governing bodies can talk about background checks, reporting standards, and athlete protection all they want, but the real question is whether the culture will finally stop rewarding silence.

Craig Jones’ message did not solve that problem. One video never could. But it did something the sport badly needed: it made the alleged tactic itself impossible to dress up as a misunderstanding.

If the accusation is true, then this was not leadership, not faith, and not “handling things internally.” It was raw pressure aimed at someone who had already gone to police.

And that is exactly why people are paying attention. Because once a sport starts recognizing that keeping quiet is part of the problem, some of its dirtiest old habits become much harder to hide.

Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD Review [2026]

Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD Review

Key Takeaways

  • The Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD is a focused three-volume instructional built around one core idea: turning closed guard into a reliable route to back exposure and back control.
  • Its biggest strength is the way Schreiner organizes related attacks, reactions, and follow-ups so the material feels like a connected system rather than a random set of back takes.
  • This is not a full closed guard encyclopedia. It is a narrower, more tactical study of how to create angle, win head-and-arm positions, and convert common upper-body attacks into back takes.
  • Grapplers who already use closed guard but feel stuck between sweeps and stalled submission attempts will likely get the most from it.
  • Rating: 9/10

GET HERE TAKE THE BACK FROM CLOSED GUARD PAUL SCHREINER DVD

The Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD is a smart release for grapplers who already believe in closed guard, but want it to do more than just slow the round down. It is structured as a three-volume set, which immediately gives it a cleaner, more purposeful feel than many instructionals that simply dump techniques into broad positional buckets.

What makes this one stand out is the choice of destination. A lot of closed guard material is still built around the classic triangle-armbar-omoplata triangle, or around sweep-first thinking. Schreiner is not ignoring those worlds entirely, but the center of gravity here is different. The Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD keeps asking a more modern question: how do you make the opponent pay for every attempt to posture, hide, or recover by exposing their back instead?

The Guard That Won’t Go Away

Closed guard is one of those positions that never really leaves the sport. Trends come and go, leg lock eras reshape the open guard conversation, and standing exchanges keep evolving, but closed guard still survives because it solves a timeless problem: it gives the bottom player a way to clamp down, slow momentum, and create offense from direct contact.

The difficulty is not whether closed guard works. The difficulty is whether the person using it has enough detail to make it dangerous against somebody who knows how to posture, hand-fight, and avoid obvious traps. That is why closed guard back takes are so interesting. They sit in a sweet spot between old-school control and modern offensive flow. When the opponent is obsessed with defending armbars, triangles, and hip-bump style dilemmas, the back often becomes the reward for overdefending in predictable ways.

In that sense, the Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD is built around a very practical reality of live rolling: many people are good at seeing front-facing attacks coming, but much worse at recognizing when they are gradually giving their back away.

There is also a larger developmental benefit here. Learning to attack the back from closed guard teaches more than a handful of techniques. It sharpens your sense of angle, posture manipulation, and transitional control. It also improves your understanding of back control from guard, which is a skill that often separates decent guard players from genuinely dangerous ones.

The Legendary Paul Schreiner

Paul Schreiner is a credible person to teach this subject for reasons that go beyond a generic black belt label. He is a black belt under Claudio França who also worked extensively with names like Garth Taylor, Marcelo Garcia, and Dave Camarillo. The same source notes his competitive credentials, including podium finishes at IBJJF Worlds and Masters Worlds, while also highlighting his role at Marcelo Garcia’s academy in New York.

Schreiner has taught Jiu-Jitsu for over 20 years, including 14 years at Marcelo Garcia Academy in NYC, and notes that he was part of the coaching team behind major academy successes there. He has a reputation as a focused teacher with a non-denominational teaching approach, which actually fits the tone of this instructional quite well.

Schreiner has stated that Jiu-Jitsu took over his life after he first walked into a school as a teenager, and how he eventually made a career out of teaching at Marcelo Garcia Jiu-Jitsu Academy in New York. He is a coach who has spent years refining positions that work in real rooms, with real students, under a very technical lineage.

Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD Review

The Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD is organized into three volumes. It follows a progression that starts with core closed guard posture-breaking and upper-body control, then narrows into a pinch headlock system, and finally expands into armlock, high guard, arm drag, and kimura interactions that all feed the back-taking theme. The full set runs a little over two hours, which is long enough to develop the idea properly without feeling bloated.

Volume 1 – The Route to the Back

The first volume is where Schreiner builds the framework with setups and finishing material from the back and three-quarters back mount (yeah, new to me too). That chapter list tells you a lot about the teaching philosophy already: this is not closed guard as a static shell, but as a sequence of controls that progressively ruin posture and expose turning angles.

The Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD seems to understand that back takes fail when people chase the finish before they have actually shifted the opponent’s structure. Volume 1 appears designed to solve that problem. The material on arm positioning, tipping, underhooks, and head-and-arm situations suggests a very deliberate path: first make the opponent structurally weak, then move behind them.

Volume 2 – Sweeping Connections

Part 2 is shorter, but it looks purposeful rather than thin. It is a tight cluster of ideas, and it gives the second volume a more specialized identity. What I like about this section conceptually is that it broadens the way the viewer can think about the back.

Instead of treating the back take as a separate category, Schreiner appears to connect it to sweeping reactions and upper-body entanglements. In practical terms, that is how good closed guard offense usually works. You threaten one lane, the opponent shifts to save themselves, and the real score comes in the second or third beat.

This part of the Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD may end up being especially useful for people who already have basic closed guard attacks, but do not yet chain them well. The pinch headlock focus gives the volume a narrow lane, but that is also why it could be so effective. Rather than throwing twenty ideas at you, it looks like Schreiner is trying to make one family of reactions extremely dependable.

Volume 3 – Finsihing

The final volume appears to bring the system into more familiar attacking crossroads. It’s a very attractive final section because it links the back-taking theme to attacks most grapplers already recognize. This is where the instructional seems most likely to click for a broad audience.

A lot of grapplers understand the front-facing threats of the armlock and kimura, but they do not always see how those attacks can function as steering wheels. Schreiner seems to use them as transitional hubs instead of dead-end submissions. That approach gives the Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD a more layered feel, because it is no longer just “here is how to take the back from one setup.” It becomes a web of interconnected threats.

Volume 3 also helps the set avoid feeling too narrow. Yes, the theme is specific, but the pathways into it are not. High guard, arm drags, and kimura interactions give the material enough familiarity that the average grappler can probably plug parts of it into existing rounds fairly quickly.

Implementing the System

The best way to use the Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD is not to binge it and then randomly hunt back takes in sparring. This is the kind of material that benefits from focused study in layers. Start with the first volume and isolate the posture-breaking and angle-creation pieces. Then do short rounds where the only goal is to move the opponent into the first stage of exposure rather than finish the whole sequence.

From there, add the follow-ups. One good method would be positional sparring from closed guard with the top player instructed to posture, pummel for inside position, or stand in realistic ways. That creates the exact kinds of reactions Schreiner is trying to exploit. Once that starts feeling natural, the second and third volumes become much more useful, because you are no longer memorizing techniques in a vacuum.

The practical value here is strong because the subject has real spillover into general guard development. Even if you never become someone whose entire game revolves around back takes, the Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD can improve how you think about chaining attacks, using upper-body controls, and converting defensive reactions into offense. That is high-value material for regular training, not just niche competition prep.

BACK TAKE FROM CLOSED GUARD PAUL SCHREINER DVD DOWNLOAD

Who Is This For?

This instructional looks best suited for blue belts and above, especially grapplers who already play closed guard enough to appreciate subtle improvements. A newer white belt can still learn from it, but they may struggle if they do not yet understand how to keep posture broken, manage grips, or maintain angles under resistance.

It is also a strong fit for players who prefer control before explosion. If your idea of guard offense is forcing predictable reactions and then advancing position, this will likely make sense immediately. If you are more of a fast-submission hunter who wants a giant catalogue of finishes, the Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD may feel more methodical than exciting at first.

Competitors should get a lot from it too, especially because back exposure and back control remain so valuable across many rulesets. The best audience is the grappler who already believes closed guard can be offensive, but wants a more organized answer for opponents who defend the obvious stuff well.

Pros & Potential Drawbacks

Pros:

  • Clear system design: The material appears built around connected reactions instead of disconnected techniques, which makes it easier to study and actually apply.
  • Strong positional focus: Keeping the emphasis on back exposure and back control gives the set a clear identity instead of trying to be every closed guard instructional at once.
  • Practical chapter selection: The inclusion of underhooks, pinch headlock work, armlock interactions, and kimura-to-back sequences hits realistic training problems.
  • Good teacher-topic match: Schreiner’s long coaching background makes him a believable guide for a detail-heavy subject that depends on timing and transitions.
  • Useful for long-term development: Even outside the exact techniques, the material should improve the viewer’s understanding of angle creation and transitional offense.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Narrower than a full closed guard course: If you want a broad survey of sweeps, submissions, entries, and defenses from every closed guard scenario, this is not that.
  • Probably better for experienced guard players: Brand-new grapplers may not have enough feel yet to appreciate the small details that make these back takes work.
  • Volume 2 is more specialized: The pinch headlock section may feel slightly more niche unless that connection already exists in your game.

Old School CG Attacks

The Take the Back from Closed Guard Paul Schreiner DVD does exactly what a good specialized instructional should do: it takes one idea, organizes it well, and makes it feel much more accessible than it might on first glance. Our initial review supports that impression with a logical three-volume structure and a chapter list built around progression, not filler, given that Schreiner has spent years teaching exactly this kind of detail-oriented Jiu-Jitsu.