Alexandre Paiva with his son, now a brown belt world champion / Personal archive photo, 2011
Team Alliance, under the captainship of Master Romero Jacaré, won the World Championship yet again this year, but not all the school’s teachers are 100% pleased with what they saw in the Long Beach Pyramid on the first week of June.
That’s the case with Alexandre “Gigi” Paiva, who witnessed his son return home to Rio the brown belt champion of the world in the featherweight division. But that wasn’t reason enough for the Jiu-Jitsu professor to be fully satisfied with what he saw.
“I’m happy about my son winning the title. But I noticed that Victor was the only little guy who won playing on top, and I’m not just talking about brown belts. In the other finals—forgive me if I’m being unfair to anyone—I only saw guys with their buts on the ground trying to win. Horrible, in my opinion,” said Paiva.
“The way I see it, Victor showed it’s still possible to win by playing on top. And he won in fine form, since he finished all his opponents except [Gianni] Grippo,” he explained.
Watch the featherweight brown belt final between Victor Genovesi and Gianni Grippo. For the complete results from the IBJJF World Championship, click here.
The post Gigi and Worlds: “The kids don’t try winning from the top anymore” first appeared on Graciemag.