Our friend Hywel Teague at BJJHacks has done it again. This time, we’ve got rising star Yuri Simoes talking about what it takes to be a champion.

Yuri is a young up-and-comer fighting as part of the renowned Checkmat team. He won last year’s Gi and No-Gi Mundials at brown belt and was awarded his black belt by Ricardo Vieira. At black belt, he closed out the Heavyweight division at Pan-Ams with Lucas Leite and made it to the quarterfinals at the Mundials, where he lost on points to Xande Ribeiro.

Yuri is definitely a person to watch out for in the future and I look forward to watching him grow as a competitor and a top-level black belt. So check out the video and get pumped to do some training.