Marcelo Garcia is widely regarded as the greatest jiujitsu athlete of all time. I found an old footage of him rolling with UFC veteran Andrei Arlovski. Keep in mind that Arlovski is a heavyweight while Marcelo Garcia weights around 150 pounds. So Marcelo is giving up almost 100 pounds. And Arlovski is no slouch on the mats either. He has a silver medal in the Sambo World Cup and has some high-level jiu jitsu training over at American Top Team. But as you can see in the video, Arlvoski was just trying to survive in the roll. How the roll went just goes to show you how far ahead Marcelo Garcia is compared to everyone else.
In the video, there were two guard passes that were just beautiful to watch and Marcelo Garcia made it look too easy and effortless. In this article, we will go over the two guard passes and how he did them.
First Guard Pass
The two videos below shows the first guard pass. The first video is in realtime and the second video is in slow motion so you can see the intricacies of the guard pass.
In this guard pass, Arlovski is flat on his back and has Mercelo's right foot trapped. Marcelo fakes a guard pass to the right. He rotates his body, widens his base, and uses his left hand to hold onto Arlovski's right knee. Arlovski reacted by turning to his side to defend. As soon as Marcelo feels Arlovski turn his hips, he then steps uses his left foot to step over the Arlovski's right knee and successfully free his right leg as Arvlovski turns over to right side to defend. Marcelo immediately uses the knee to post aganst Arlovski in order to prevent him from turning fully to the other side. Marcelo successfully passed the guard and easily went into side control. So genius and smooth.
Second Guard Pass
In this second guard pass, Arlovski's right leg is stuck between Marcelo's two thighs. Marcelo both his legs to trap Arlovski's right leg so to make it harder for him to retain his guard. At the same time, Marcelo is putting heavy pressure on Arlovski so that his mobility is limited. As he has Arlovki's right leg folded, he also puts heavy pressure on the leg using his hips to immobilize it. As the the leg is immobilized Marcelo slowly advances to side control while keeping heavy pressure on Arlovski's leg until he is fully in side control. All I can say is wow. I've tried this guard pass many times and it has never been anything close to the ease that Marcelo shows here.
Full Video of the Roll
If you are interested in seeing the full roll, here is footage of it below:
