Cleber Sousa is all set for his next big challenge in ONE Championship…
As he’s gearing up for a submission grappling match against the 2022 IBJJF no-gi world champion Osamah Almarwai!
Sousa, a seasoned black belt, is not new to the ONE Championship stage.
His first match was in September 2022, where he didn’t win against Mikey Musumeci during their fight for the ONE flyweight submission grappling world title.
But that didn’t slow him down. Sousa kept competing and winning against top competitors in different tournaments.
His next opponent, Almarwai, also faced Musumeci and lost in a match in May 2023.
Sousa learned a lot from his own match with Musumeci, especially about the importance of going for submissions.
Here’s what he had to share in an interview with ONE Championship:
It was my debut for ONE, and I was immediately fighting for the belt.
I learned from this fight that I need to look for submissions more.
And now, Sousa is ready to bring this aggressive strategy to his fight with Almarwai.
He has noticed that Almarwai’s style is very strategic and works well in IBJJF competitions.
However, Sousa thinks this approach might not be as effective in ONE Championship, where the focus is on submission attempts:
I was at the 2022 Worlds, where I came in third place, and I watched Osamah’s fights.
I saw that he is a very strategic athlete.
It works very well based on the IBJJF rules, but these rules don’t fit very well with the ONE rules.In ONE there is no scoring, so I believe that if he comes with the same strategy, it won’t work in ONE.
ONE’s Jiu-Jitsu is aggressive Jiu-Jitsu, and the Jiu-Jitsu he presents is strategic Jiu-Jitsu.
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