Featherweight Samir Chantre on the Worlds: “I’m injure free even with all this hard training”

Samir Chantre is another black belt ready for the 2014 World Championship. Going for the featherweight gold medal this weekend, Samir is a Caio Terra Association black belt who has much competition experience.

Graciemag spoke with the black belt on his training, Caio Terra’s status and the submission-only formats for tournaments:

GRACIEMAG: How is your training going for this years worlds? Are you doing anything different this year to prepare than in previous years?

SAMIR CHANTRE: Training has been amazing. It’s been a very busy season for me with a lot of tournaments lined up so I’ve been training a lot non stop. For Worlds, like we always do prior to the major tournaments, we are having our camp at the Institute of Martial Arts with a lot of good guys to train and led by Caio.
One thing I’m doing different is conditioning training that I never did before. Alan Moraes, my first instructor back in Brazil, is the one that is taking care of my conditioning training, sending me my training all the way from Brazil. It has been amazing and I’m feeling great and most importantly, I’m injure-free even with all this hard training.

You recently fought in Metamoris. How was that experience and do you prefer that style of matches vs IBJJF?

It was a really good experience. I felt a lot of pressure and to be honest that was my biggest challenge on that night. Afterwards I felt I could have done much better… It wasn’t myself up there..
Comparing both styles, Metamoris and IBJJF, I like submission-only a lot but we can’t have tournaments for everyone in this style. Imagine a 3000-competitor tournament with sub-only? So I think one compliments the other.

A lot of people are talking about Caio as he did not defend his Pan title and isn’t defending his Worlds title this year. How is his health and do you think he will compete again?

I’m sure he will compete again and that’s what I pray for! But I think right now is not the best time. We spoke a lot last week because he was struggling himself to train so he could fight, but he is not well… A couple of days he had to stop training because he was feeling really bad, the other day he couldn’t even finish teaching a class..
Right now is time for him to recover, start thinking about his future. Better to see him out this year but healthier and stronger for the next season.

Is there anything you would like to add?

I want to thank my sponsor CTRL Industries for all the support for all these years. Also I would like to say that CTA will go very strong for this year’s Worlds. Caio may be out from fighting but he will be there to coach us and we will do our best to make him win as a coach instead! He deserves it! We will be fighting not only for ourselves but for him too!