How To Throw Men Half Your Age

Raoni Barcelos has one of the simplest and most aesthetically pleasing styles for fighting. He had a horrifying scare this past weekend

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Now let’s get into it.

Raoni Barcelos is a promoter’s nightmare. He’s old, isn’t flashy in or out of the cage, and his efficient wrestling makes him a nightmare for up and coming fighters.

That’s exactly why you should appreciate him and his game.

Raoni was formerly part of Brazil’s national wrestling team. He has won Brazilian and South American freestyle wrestling tournaments and major IBJJF No Gi events. This combined with a record where half of the wins are decisions usually makes for a boring fighter. That is not the case for Raoni.

Raoni has some of the best chain wrestling in the UFC. I know he is literally a wrestler but his style is all judo.

One of judo’s guiding principles is “seiryoku zenyo”. This roughly translates to maximum efficiency, minimum effort. Judokas understand and apply this by using their opponent’s effort and momentum to off balance them for easy high amplitude throws.

Raoni starts his off balancing efforts by running into his opponents to pick up single legs.

Raoni doesn’t drop low, blast through his opponent, or use any complicated hand fighting. He just bends over to grab a leg.

Raoni’s skills starts to shine when he can’t dump people off of his initial single leg.

Sometimes Raoni doesn’t try to run the pipe nor dump anyone down and instead goes straight to a foot sweep.

Why are these working so well? And why does it look so easy?

Raoni runs into his opponents to get them moving backwards.
Once they’re moving backwards their foot is off of the floor.
Once their foot is off of the floor their leg is easy to pick up.

Once you get someone hopping around on one leg there’s really only so much they can do. And how long can you hop on one leg with someone running you around before you fall over?

It really is that simple.

Raoni’s craft really shines when he has to abandon the single and move up his opponent’s body.

Sometimes fighters turn away and sacrifice their backside to try to escape from Raoni. This usually doesn’t get them far.

When Raoni does move up his opponent’s torso he can start working the foot sweeps that have made him a favorite of hardcore fans.

The coolest parts of Raoni’s game appear when he’s wrestling in front of his opponents.

If Raoni is in front of his opponent and he locks his hands he’ll try to step in between or across their base.

When fighters keep a bladed stance to deny Raoni stepping inside he’ll kick their foot out. Again, Raoni kicks his opponent’s feet out after he forces them to move and their foot is light.

If Raoni gets his opponent on the fence he’ll sweep their foot out once they try to circle off.

Most takedowns don’t come this smoothly. Competent grapplers generally deny their opponent harassing their base by keeping their hips and feet away. Raoni knows this. He anticipates it. He wants his opponent to overcorrect so he can kick their base out. And he gets his overreactions by stepping in deeper and deeper until his opponent is forced to flee.

I wrote this article a few days after Raoni Barcelos was beating the crap out of Raul Rosas Jr. Then the veteran’s body gave out. Raoni went limp in the cage, looked to be having a heart attack, and Raul Rosas Jr. was gifted a TKO with the biggest asterisk you’ll ever see on a fighter’s record.

Raoni has since regained consciousness but we still don’t know what happened. Or why.

I do know that Raoni is one of the many fighters across the history of combat sports who does his job, doesn’t ask for anything other than the opportunity to keep entertaining us, and hasn’t earned the recognition he deserves. I hope this article starts to help correcting that lack of attention by showing you how cool and crafty this guy is.

I’ve been going back to watch some older fights when grappling was a bigger part of the sport. One of my favorite largely forgotten fights is Jake Shields vs Justin Mayhem Miller. It was 25 minutes of some of the coolest scrambling sequences you’ll ever see.

I’m putting together an article on this fight and some of the back defense we can learn from it for paying subscribers. I’ll be sending it out later this week.