Training with World Champions – Who’s Number 1?

Sorry guys. The title is misleading. This is NOT a top 10 list. I repeat! This is NOT a top 10 list, ranking worst to best. This is simply my experiences over the years training with some of the best grapplers on the planet.

Thanks to my work with Scramble and Polaris, I am sometimes lucky enough to share the mat with some of the best grapplers on the planet. This is one of the incredible things about jiujitsu – the very highest level athletes are still somewhat accessible to the lesser mortals of the sport. You can do a seminar with the best guy in the world and chances are you will be able to roll with him or her at the end of the seminar. This is like going to a football camp with Messi or Ronaldo and playing a match with them at the end – a very rare luxury that we should all be grateful for when we get the opportunity.

Without further ado, here are 10 of my most memorable experiences with the top jiujitsu and grappling athletes in the world. (once again, NOT a top 10, and I am sure I forgot a bunch of people!)

Further disclaimer – I am a hobbyist black belt, so I never expect to pose much of a threat to any of these guys, however, I have been training for a long time, and I weight between 80 and 85kg, so I feel like I should at least be able to make these guys sweat or breathe hard. Maybe. If I catch them on an off day.

Mateusz Szczesinski & Kamil Wilk

I will put these guys in together as my first time rolling with them was when they were both on Polaris. As is customary, we were doing the pre-Polaris open mat which is a great opportunity for us to roll with really good people. I knew that both of them were famous for their leglocks (although this was before the Leglock Camp days.) Little did I realise just how good they were. I think I rolled with Mateusz first, and he heel hooked me around 5 or 6 times in six minutes. Not only that but his bolos to backtakes were insanely hard to stop. Then after that I rolled with Kamil, and he did exactly the same. Leglock after leglock. It was another roll that showed me just how far the nogi leglock game had diverged from classical gi jiujitsu. It felt like they were doing a different sport (one I absolutely sucked at.) The below photos are taken from this time, although neither athlete was wearing Scramble just yet!

Masakazu Imanari

I have known Masakazu Imanari now for a number of years and we have grown to be quite close friends. My first experience training with him was when he was booked on to compete on Polaris against Garry Tonon. I went to Japan to film, and jumped in on the training session. You may be surprised to hear that Imanari both trains and teaches regularly in the gi. In fact, he is very good in the gi and his game is completely different to his leglock heavy nogi game. He likes passing and top position (at least in my experience.) But of course where he really shines is in his insane and unorthodox nogi game, spamming leglocks and crazy armbars / omoplatas from everwhere. I remember one particular time – I just received my black belt – he said “oh, now we can roll for real!” or words to that effect, and proceeded to spam quite possibly the highest concentration of heavily applied subs I may ever have experienced. Nowadays you can find him at his gym, still rolling every day, and every week a new foreigner arrives fresh off the plane and visits the gym waiting to get heel hooked by the legend Masakazu Imanari. I think one of the biggest things to impress upon people is that rolling with Imanari is fun – painful, but fun.

Dillon Danis

My rolling experience with Dillon Danis was extremely brief but left a lasting impact. We visited New York to film for Polaris. Dillon was a brown belt at the time, and not just any brown belt – one of the best prospects on the jiujitsu world circuit, winning every tournament he entered. We were at Marcelo Garcia’s gym in NYC filming Gianni Grippo (I believe) and we would always jump in for a roll once the filming was taken care of. I caught Dillon’s eye and asked for a roll. He obliged. I think Dillon Danis was the most relaxed person I ever rolled with. He was extremely chill, to the point of looking bored, but I felt the huge skill gulf between us. Even when I tried to “put it on” the tiniest bit, he barely broke a sweat, and easily countered or nullified everything I did. It was a great example of a relaxed but high level jiujitsu – didn’t require any effort or stress but still was easily able to completely kill everything I was attempting to do.

Satoshi Ishii

Satoshi Ishii is pound for pound the strongest grappler I have ever felt. We were in Las Vegas for Quintet 3, a crazy team grappling event invented by Kazushi Sakuraba and promoted by UFC Fight Pass. We had put together a team for Polaris that included Craig Jones, Vitor Shaolin, Marcin Held, Gregor Gracie and Dan Strauss. During the lead up to the event, we visited a local gym with this lot, plus Satoshi Ishii who was in the superfight against Frank Mir. I did a round or two with everyone (more on that later) but Ishii really stuck in my head simply due to the immense power he possessed. The man is a judo Olympic gold medalist. I don’t know how many high level judo guys you have rolled with, and how many of them are world champions, but let me tell you – they are strong as fuck, and that does not do it justice. When he gripped my forearm, it felt like it might snap. (Special shoutout here for Dan Strauss, who is probably the second strongest person I ever rolled with.)

Craig Jones

I rolled with Craig back before he was Uber Craig the marketing and jiujitsu elite machine he is now, but even back then, he was incredibly good. It was only a brief roll and I went away thinking that he felt like a frog, on steroids. His body was very flat, and his limbs were folding underneath him in a strange way that made him impossible to sweep. Dangerous with submissions, creative, incredibly strong and flexible, cat-like balance – even back then he was extremely impressive as a grappler, I can only imagine how hard he is to deal with now.

Vitor Shaolin

Vitor Shaolin Ribeiro was one of my early experiences of rolling with one of the true greats of jiujitsu. I was a purple belt at the time, and nursing my first (very nasty) cauliflower ear. We trained in the small garage of Alex de Souza, a BJJ black belt living in my home town. There were only a few of us there. The reason the roll stands out is that we rolled twice. The first time, he simply allowed me to do whatever I wanted, and analysed my game thoroughly. The next time, he easily nullified every single move I had previously done. It was super impressive. Most of all I remember how he killed my butterfly guard. I am relatively tall and he said “oh that’s interesting, usually it is short guys who use butterfly.” He let me play with it a little in the first round, but in the second, he basically did the splits, headbutted me in the chest, and floated right over my butterfly hooks, repeatedly. I learned the lesson then of head position – head in the chest almost kills butterfly guard dead.

Braulio Estima

Braulio is a legend in jiujitsu, one of the best known of the last generation of Brazilians. He is a charismatic, fun guy to hang around with – and his jiujitsu is top class. I write his name here because he came to our gym to do a seminar, and showed collar drags to chokes. They were awesome and I still use them to this day at least once a week. The impressive part was at the end of the seminar, he said “Ok guys, free sparring now.” I think I was up first, and after a brief feeling out period, he put his hand in my collar, dragged me, and choked me quickly. I laughed – ah, I see what you did there! – and he winked. Then he called out the next guy, and did the same. Some play, collar drag, choke. Then the next guy, the same thing. He did the exact same thing to every person in the room, even when we cottoned on to what was happening, and it was extremely impressive.

Daisuke Nakamura

Nakamura Daisuke is a classic case of “If you know, you know.” One of the most successful domestic Japanese BJJ athletes of all time (multiple-time all Japan black belt and open class champion), Daisuke is famous for the permanent smile on his face. The Smiling Assassin. Always smiling, but an absolute monster on the mat. Fast, creative, highly technical, and very powerful, rolling with Daisuke truly feels like rolling with someone levels above you in every aspect. I trained with Daisuke a number of times over the years mostly at his gym in Japan, and each time I was always super impressed not only by his skills but also by his attitude.

Eddie Cummings

Now, this is NOT a top 10 list of course, but if it was, I may be tempted to put Eddie at the top. Before his appearance vs Augusto Mendes, Eddie was looking for somewhere private to train, so we opened up the Scramble warehouse. This was back when we had enough space to lay some mats out. I did a few rounds with Eddie and let me tell you, I never felt so much like someone doing a different sport than I did then, and this was many years ago. Every grip he took was vice-like. Every movement put some strain or pain on some part of my body. Every movement I made was wrong and took me deeper into a trap he was laying, and every submission he applied stretched my ligaments and joints to the absolute max. I can’t emphasise enough – Eddie Cummings was a well-honed, joint destroying machine, and it was physically impossible to get any sort of offense going on him. I would say in terms of leglock danger he compared to what I felt rolling with Kamil and Mateusz, but back then he was so shockingly ahead of his time, it had even more of an impact. It truly is a shame that Eddie disappeared from the competition BJJ scene

Once again, I have trained with so many of our current sponsored athletes who are all phenomenal and would destroy me in a heartbeat – this is just a list of some of the more memorable or unique encounters I have had with some of the “celebrities” of our little sport.

Thanks for reading!

Matt @ Scramble