Everyday Porrada: Romulo Barral
Credit: Kitt Canaria
“The secret is to train hard every day. Everyday Porrada and nothing else!“ – Romulo Barral
A five time IBJJF World Champion at Medium-Heavy and an ADCC Champion, Romulo Barral was a force to be reckon with over the course of his illustrious career. Starting, his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu journey at 15 years of age, Barral joined Gracie Barra, an association in which he would become the face of, eventually establishing his own academy in Northridge, California.
Throughout his legendary run, Barral employed perhaps the most devastating pass in the history of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. While the knee cut is a pass seen in every competition regardless of weight, level, or age, Barral’s version routinely passed some of the toughest guards the sport has ever seen.
When passing an opponent’s guard while using heavy pressure, it is pertinent to pin your opponent to the mat. In no-gi grappling, this is primarily accomplished by applying a crossface on your opponent, which controls the spine and head of the opponent, keeping them from scrambling or defending.
As Murilo Santana, passes his opponent’s guard he employs the crossface while tripoding, completely immobilizing his opponent’s upper body as he continues to pass.
Due to the nature of no-gi grappling, the crossface is by far the best means of pinning another person to the mat yet in gi, the collar provides another avenue. Barral’s knee cut is predicated on getting a thumb-in grip at the back of his opponent’s collar. This allows Barral to use his forearm instead of his shoulder as the mechanism that puts pressure on his opponent’s upper body. By using the forearm, Barral is able to maintain his balance while providing constant pressure as he looks for his other pertinent grip, on his opponent’s hips.
The grip on his opponent’s hip is just as vital as the thumb-in grip as it allows Barral to pin his opponent’s lower body to the mat. If both an opponent’s spine and waist are glued to the mat, they have no ability to escape as the can no longer hip escape meaning they can neither create distance between the passer and themselves to recompose their guard, or come up with an underhook to try to sweep their opponent.
Barral enters the passing sequence with grips on both of his opponent’s collars to initially pin his opponent and to prevent his opponent from making any grip on his sleeves, which would inhibit the pass. Barral makes sure that the cutting knee is able to touch the mat before proceeding with his usually pressure passing sequence. Once Barral is in position to knee cut he looks to make the thumb-in grip on his opponent’s collar and looks to cover his opponent’s hips, preventing a potential escape. Once he is able to establish adequate depth with his thumb-in grip, Barral make a grip on the pants of the opponent. When this occurs Barral turns both of these grips down to pin his opponent to the mat to unlock the clamp on his leg, and advances to side control.
The grip on the collar is not solely a passing threat for Barral as he uses it to enact his most habitual submission, the cross choke.
Against IBJJF World Champion Partick Gaudio, Barral tripods to force Gaudio to turn to his side. This is necessary because it allows Barral to drive his knee to the mat, creating the desired point of entry. Once he places his knee on the mat, Barral uses both grips to re-flatten Gaudio and establish side control with a far side underhook to prevent Gaudio from turning in on him. Once the position is secured, Barral digs for the thumb-in grip on the back of Gaudio’s collar while transitioning to knee-on-belly before using that grip to feed the collar to his other hand. Once the grip is secured, Barral looks to lock in the cross choke and once again tripods to finish the sequence.
Barral rarely had to adjust his passing tactics, but that does not mean he did not have other methods of shredding his opponent’s guard. If his opponent was completely focused on preventing his knee from reaching the mat, Barral was content to knee slice across his opponent’s body to reach the 3/4 mount position.
Barral’s opponent stops Barral from placing his knee on the mat through lapel control, making it an inefficient solution to diffusing the guard. To solve this problem, Barral switches from gripping his opponent’s hip to controlling the pants by the knee line, turning his opponent’s hips to face away from him before slicing across to secure the 3/4 mount position.
Barral’s knee cut is so infamous that it has overshadowed his tremendous guard game. One of the most recognizable spider guard players to ever grace the mats, Barral’s spider guard differed from other luminaries like Michael Langhi, whom used a more traditional spider guard to rack up world titles. Barral primarily employed the spider guard on his opponent’s left side, while using a number of different grips to off balance and sweep his opponents.
Following a guard pull, Barral immediately looks to create a pants grip on Galvao’s right side while threatening a De La Riva hook. This causes Galvao to try to pin the leg Barral is threatening with to kill the De La Riva hook. Since Galvao is forced to come closer to Barral to kill the De La Riva hook, Barral is in perfect position to control Galvao’s left sleeve and enact spider guard on that side. Barral now has control over two of Galvao's potential posts, the right leg with the pants grip and the spider control on left arm. He then extends his spider arm to force Galvao to post with his right hand, before sitting up and finishing the sweep as Galvao now has no leverage to maintain proper base.
During the same match, Barral is once again able to control Galvao’s left sleeve with a spider grip and combines it with a standard sleeve grip on the other side. Wary of the previous exchange, instead of bringing his right leg up where Barral could potentially attack the De La Riva threat, Galvao goes to combat base with the leg nearest to the spider guard pointing up. This allows Barral to insert a butterfly hook with his left leg and sweep Galvao as he has no way of posting due to the double sleeve control.
When Baral is able to get a grip on both of his opponent’s sleeves, he still tends to avoid going to traditional spider guard as he usually transitions to other guards while maintaining the spider grip on his opponent’s left side.
While controlling both of his opponent’s sleeves, Barral attempts to sweep his opponent with the same sweep in the prior GIF, except because he does not have the butterfly hook, his opponent is able to prevent the sweep as there is no hook elevating him, allowing him to hop around Barral until he combat bases. To prevent the guard pass, Barral enacts a granby roll while maintaining his spider and his sleeve grips before inserting a De La Riva hook. With this grip, Barral has complete control over both arms and the outside leg on his opponent so that when he extends his spider grip and flips his hips, his opponent has no posts available to stop the sweep.
Against Galvao, Barral has the spider grip once again, yet has no control over Galvao’s right side. Therefore as he goes to the Reverse De La Riva position, he extends the spider grip to force Galvao to post on the mat with his free hand instead under hooking Barral’s head to stop him from getting under him. As Barral completes his inversion, he enters the X-guard where he is able to off balance and sweep Galvao by extending his legs, since Galvao has no means to post any longer.
Barral’s spider control control was so feared that even world champions did all they could to stop Barral from even getting the grip he desired.
Following a sweep, Lovato Jr. assumes a bladed stance with his left arm as far away from Barral as possible, even though it takes any offensive grips out of the realm of possibility for himself. Barral proceeds to grab the lapel of Lovato Jr. to stop Lovato Jr. from fleeing as he comes up on a single leg.
While keeping your arm as far away as a possible is an unusually strategy against spider guard players, stack passing is one of the more viable options as when a passer arms is completely underneath the hips of their opponent, they are not able to use the spider guard. While this works in theory against Barral, in practice, it’s a different story.
Against noted stack passer, Murilo Santana, Barral uses the bicep ride and sleeve control on Santana’s left side to prevent Santana from fully elevating Barral’s hips. As Santana postures up to change the angle of the stack, Barral inserts a butterfly hook, while reaching over to grip Santana’s belt to start the half butterfly sweep. While Santana is elevated, Barral makes sure to control both of Santana’s sleeves so that he cannot post nor come up for an underhook on Barral.
One of Barral’s most notable victories came against another famous stack passer, Bernardo Faria, where he was able to finish the legend with a no arm triangle.
Romulo Barral storied IBJJF career might have come to an end at the 2016 Worlds, yet his impact on the sport has only grown since his retirement. As the owner and operator of Gracie Barra Northridge, Barral has trained a multitude of MMA fighters and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competitors. Among his collection of students is Barral’s prize pupil, Edwin Najmi, who has placed at numerous tournaments at the black belt level, winning both the 2016 Pan American Championship, and the 2017 ACBJJ Lightweight Grand Prix. Outside of his academy, his influence can be seen on competitors such as European and Pan-American Champion, Tomoyuki Hashimoto, as BJJ Scout beautifully broke down.
One of the greatest competitors of all time, Romulo Barral employed a devastating pressure passing game with an unorthodox spider guard to win the IBJJF World Championships on five different occasions. Legendary matches with Demian Maia, Leandro Lo, and the Riberio Brothers only served to elevate his career in both victory and defeat, helping Barral become one of the best of ever step on a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu mat.