Over the next three days, I want to share three powerful lessons that I learned from the Brasileiro.
Today I’m starting with a powerful mindset lesson I learned from my Brown Belt, Marlon Tajik.
Marlon is from Sweden, but came to San Diego to train with us at Atos and achieve his dreams.
Marlon finished third place in the Medium Heavyweight 🥉
…but came back hard to become the Open Class Brown Belt Champion 🥇
Marlon Tajik after winning the Absolute Division
He lost his division to the number one seed in the Brown Belt Division in the semi finals.
Despite this, he was adamant that he would come back for the Absolute.
As a coach, I was concerned…
We’re four or five weeks away from Worlds – the last thing I want is for my fighters to get injured (Marlon is not the biggest guy for the weight division.)
We went back to the hotel and I gave him a talk to bring back the fire in him 🔥
When the absolute division started, Marlon began winning all his fights back-to-back.
It wasn’t long before he was face-to-face with the number one seed who had beaten him in his division.
It’s really hard to come back and beat someone who just defeated you. You have to be mentally strong to overcome that kind of challenge.
But Marlon did it ❤️🔥 He beat the guy who had just beaten him a few hours before 😤
After that, he beat an Ultra Heavyweight in the semi finals with a Choi Bar.
(Check out Marlon’s Choi Bar submission on my Instagram.)
Now Marlon was in the Finals of the Open Class. Marlon kept fighting the whole match, but his opponent stopped fighting…
His opponent gave up in the fight, and ended up losing by DQ (for stalling.)
This was his coach’s fault – the coach told Marlon’s opponent to settle in a strong position. And the guy trusted his coach and just obeyed. But this was a huge mistake.
So when Marlon recovered the guard, his opponent refused to engage, received four penalties, and was DQ’d for inactivity.
So Marlon became the first Open Class Brown Belt Brasileiro Champion from Sweden 🥇
(I think he’s officially the first “foreign” person that ever came to the Brasileiro and won the Open Class Brown Belt Division 💪🏽)
But we’re not that satisfied with the result – we didn’t expect the opponent to give up in the finals, so we’re going to work hard and come back strong at Worlds.
Knowing that he came back to defeat the number one seed – having already lost to him – shows me the incredible mindset and skills he has, and I’m confident he can become a World Champion in a few weeks 🔥
Oss,
Andre
Andre Galvao
Atos Jiu-Jitsu Head Coach
Jiu-Jitsu Hall Of Fame Member
