2-time World Champion! Leandro Lo has done it again and cements his position as the top lightweight in the world today.
The field performed as expected with the slight exception of Roberto Satoshi failing to make it to the quarters. By the time the dust settled it looked like a case of rematches for Lo all the way to the finals having already beaten Vinicius Marinho (twice), Lucas Lepri (4 times) and Michael Langhi (3 times). Leaving the main question as to whether any of his opponents would be employing a different strategy to shut Lo’s game down.
Unfortunately (for them), no one really could bring something different to the table with matches playing out like carbon copies of past encounters. Lo was on point proving impossible to sweep again with his active posting except for Bernado Faria in the absolute, managing to turn into Lo’s “space” to get a single leg (read more on this strategy in “Scouting Leandro Lo” here). [*addendum, Vinicius also got a sit out sweep/takedown turning into the “space” in their match, see here.] Lo was also clearly one step ahead of his peers just in terms of raw quickness/reaction time. In the finals, his toreando/drag swarming on Langhi was a frightful display (pretty much the same sequence in one of their previous encounters, shown at 2:20 of the DLR/Spider Hybrid video) and Lo managed to get an even more decisive victory in this fourth outing by sweeping Langhi towards the end. Langhi just seemed out of it really, unable to work his 50/50 on Lo, which he did so well in the earlier rounds.
Here’s a small highlight/breakdown I made for fun, Lo is a joy to watch and I couldn’t resist. Hope you guys got as much enjoyment watching Lo unleash his bag of tricks as I did. With Paulo Miyao’s absolute victory, Cicero Costha should change their tagline to “giving hope to scrawny BJJ players worldwide“. Just kidding.
Congratulations to all competitors and winners this weekend!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpxLj3wijuU&w=560&h=315]
7 comments On Leandro Lo’s 2013 Worlds Campaign Breakdown
Great job as always. Appreciate the breakdown.
nice highlight !
I tried to donate, but it says there’s a problem with how you setup your paypal address.
hey thanks! I just realised, let me look into it, really appreciate the thought
Lo did 8 matches during the Worlds.
Great job, guys. Actually, Leandro did 4 matches at lightweight, and 3 in the absolute, seven matches.
hi thanks for checking out the blog…I’m pretty sure I saw Lo fight 2 qualifiers and then 3 (in the video) for lightweight..he did 3 for absolute? hmm which guy did I miss…i watched it live so maybe I missed something…?