If you compete in the ADCC tournament, you have competed at the highest level, much like making it into a superbowl game or the world series. Whether a guy wins or not is splitting hairs as far as the "level" of his grappling.
No-gi guys have done remarkably well given their very small numbers compared to gi based competitors:
Jake Shields subbed "7x Mundials Champ" Leo Santos and took Bronze in 2005. David Avellan subbed Tarsis Humphreys and took bronze in 2009. Rustam Chsiev subbed the bigger Alex Ceconi (who beat Romulo Barral at the 2010 Abu Dhabi Pro) and won the ADCC trials. Marcos Avellan also won ADCC trials. Josh Barnett won the No-Gi Mundials at Black. Denny won No-gi Mundials at Brown. Gilbert Melendez beat Baret Yoshida at ADCC.
If that's as good as I can get without the gi, I think I'm cool with that.
No-gi guys have done remarkably well given their very small numbers compared to gi based competitors:
Jake Shields subbed "7x Mundials Champ" Leo Santos and took Bronze in 2005. David Avellan subbed Tarsis Humphreys and took bronze in 2009. Rustam Chsiev subbed the bigger Alex Ceconi (who beat Romulo Barral at the 2010 Abu Dhabi Pro) and won the ADCC trials. Marcos Avellan also won ADCC trials. Josh Barnett won the No-Gi Mundials at Black. Denny won No-gi Mundials at Brown. Gilbert Melendez beat Baret Yoshida at ADCC.
If that's as good as I can get without the gi, I think I'm cool with that.
Bookmarks