Jack Slack is a pen name of a unknown freelancer famous for his great coverage of combat sports. In the latest feature he’s turned attention to the 3 grapplers everyone should know.

3 grapplers made it onto his versatile list – Marcelo Garcia, Caio Terra and Eddie Cummings.

Marcelo Garcia is perhaps the most obvious choice for the list. The one man whose name is known even to the freshest of hobbyists has an enormous list of credits.

And this doesn’t even scratch the surface really! Jack Slack writes:

“What makes Marcelo Garcia so fascinating is that he burst onto the scene with a few quirky looks that were unusual at the time—a great sitting guard and butterfly sweeps, arm drags from everywhere, and the uncommon X-guard. But to continue excelling at the highest level of competition Garcia developed dozens of other quirks and innovated much of grappling’s modern meta game. Over the years Garcia went from being the guy who always gets the back to being famed for his guillotine (you will doubtless be familiar with the high elbow guillotine which is often termed the Marcelotine), his omoplata and even his razor armlocks. On the subject of razor armlocks, you will probably be aware of the technique and if you train you may have forced a few taps with it, but the consistency with which Garcia has succeeded with this technique is staggering.”

And indeed a book could be written for his X guard entries alone!

Now Caio Terra is a peculiar choice. Terra stands out in most regards – he’s awkward, not really all that athletic and famous for the anti athlete diet – A skittles obsession.

Terra has been outspoken about his experience being bullied but he’s not entirely broken into mainstream – his success is largely tied to the IBJJF scene because due to his small stature he doesn’t really compete at ADCC – which only has the 66, 77 and 88kg categories.

However Terra is very interesting to observe – besides the IBJJF related gifs Slack inputs there’s also the duels against Jeff Glover at Metamoris which are always quite interesting to revisit.

On Terra Slack writes for Fightland:

“But it is in no gi competition which Terra looks best, and a number of innovations in his game help this. De La Riva guard is largely a sweeping guard with the berimbolo now being commonplace, and transitioning to sitting guard has always been a competition mainstay. Without a belt to grip for a berimbolo or a sleeve to control for sit up sweeps the De La Riva suffers more than most positions when the gi comes off. Caio Terra’s straight foot lock from the De La Riva guard has added a surprisingly effective submission threat from that guard. Here is the technique demonstrated quite clearly in the gym.”

Caio Terra On His Candy Addiction:”I like to mix candies as much as possible.”

Eddie Cummings is the 3rd pick. The Wolverine has been known for ages as the king of leglocks. He’ll pretty much leg lock you from any position imaginable.

On Cummings Slack writes:

Cummings does a lot of his best work from what is sometimes called ‘inside sankaku’ but what an IBJJF referee would call a ‘disqualification for knee reaping’. Cummings’ methods for getting there are varied. Sometimes he will get the two-on-one from seated guard and elevated his opponent into a single leg x-guard, other times he will thread his top leg inside while the opponent is attempting to pass. Here, for instance, Cummings elevates his man from butterfly guard, but allows his top leg to fall across underneath his opponent. This might seem like a failed butterfly sweep and a successful start to a smash pass, but Cummings moved straight into his inside sankaku.

However Cummings hadn’t been the most succesful at ADCC in 2015, the true marker of skill will probably be how he does this year.

Eddie Cummings Started BJJ at 26 And Changed His Whole Life For The Gentle Art

You can read more of Slack’s grappling analysis here.