Fabio Gurgel teaches how to escape the 50/50 guard (part 1)

Gurgel at Alliance São Paulo in 2013. Ivan Trindade

The patience of the scores of Graciemag fans who were waiting for an entire decade for the translation of our videos in which Fabio Gurgel teaches how to escape from the controversial 50/50 guard has finally paid off.

The description of the first video, posted on August 21, 2009, reads:

Alliance’s leader Fabio Gurgel teaches exclusively to GRACIEMAG.com readers two escapes from the new and polemic 50/50 guard. The two escapes were invented by purple belt Ricardo Mesquita, who shows the move with Gurgel in the video. Enjoy the first escape.

Here’s our decade-in-the-making translated transcript (and sorry, but a couple of words seem to be indeed lost forever, despite our best efforts):

“Arriving in this position, I have to worry about two things. In fact, they are two different situations. The first is when he has the straight foot lock on my foot here. And the second is when he has his hand on the inside, which we’ll look at later.

“So the first situation, with the foot lock, I’ll open his [?] and take his grip off. I’ll get my hand on the outside of the knee to make his grip weak, and I’ll break it. I’ll control the edge of his sleeve and pull his arm up. My objective now is to step on his armpit to prevent him coming up, and I’ll sit back. So I’ll step [0:37] and stretch my leg here, stopping him from being able to come up.

“Once I’ve done that, I have stretched his body and created space, freeing the movement of my leg — which I will throw to the other side, already undoing the position. To complete this motion, I will throw my leg and now I’ll push his knee over my knee, and the sleeve [0:58] over his body, and bring my leg back. My knee is already free on this side. I’ve undone the position.”

Check back with us soon for part 2, which should be easy to find under the site’s Techniques tab. We do intend to translate it in a timely fashion.