Kasai Pro 7 Heavyweight Brackets Released!

By Maine Miller, January 30, 2020

Kasai has released their round robin stage brackets for their stacked heavyweight tournament. We take a look at the the A side and B side of the bracket in anticipation of Saturdays event.

Kasai Pro 7 Heavyweight Bracket A

Bracket A Entrants are, Nick Rodriguez, Cyborg, Vinny Magalha, Bruno Bastos

Bracket A much like bracket B has been configure to give the fans the rematch that they want. Nick Rodriguez will be taking on Cyborg in one of the round robin stages of this tournament. A key factor in this matchup may be the order that these two grapplers face each other and how fresh each one is going into the matchup.

Nick Rodriguez who has made the full time move to Renzo Gracie Academy in late 2019, and now trains full time with John Danaher took a close decision victory over Cyborg at ADCC 2019, that Cyborg disagreed with. This will be an opportunity to run this matchup back in a similar points based rule set, and see how both grapplers deal with each other a second time.

Nick and Vinny are scheduled to face off in a tag team match at Submission underground with Craig Jones as nicks teammate and Bracket B competitor Kyle Boehm pairing up with Vinny. This Kasai matchup will give viewers an idea about how these two potentially will matchup again in the near future when they meet in 2-23-2020 in Portland Oregon.

Bruno Bastos is the only member of Bracket A that we did not see at ADCC 2019, the half guard player does have recent Kasai experience against Tom Deblass so we know that he is experienced in the Kasai Rule set.

This round robin format will see all the athletes from bracket A face each other to earn points based on method of victory. With the athlete who earns the most points in the round robin stage facing the winner of bracket B in the finals of the heavyweight tournament.

Kasai Pro 7 Heavyweight Bracket B

Bracket A Entrants are, Patrick Gaudio, João Gabriel Rocha, Lucas "Hulk" Barbosa, Kyle Boehm.

This bracket also features a rematch that fans of BJJ Fanatics will know. The rematch of the BJJ Fanatics Black Belt GP that saw Lucas "Hulk" Barbosa , meet Kyle Boehm in the finals for the $10,000 prize and Instructional deal with BJJ Fanatics. This match saw dominate positional work and passing from Barbosa in the regulation period, but in the EBI overtime with Kyle being able to start in a dominate position, something that became the subject of his instructional, Kyle was able to take the victory in overtime.

With this rematch taking place under the Kasai points rules, Kyle will have to implement a different strategy than in his first matchup with Hulk in order to take this hotly anticipated rematch. Barbosa will need to implement the strategy he did in the regulation period to win the round robin section of this bracket.
Partick Gaudio less than one week off of his IBJJF European championship weight class victory will also be scheduled to rematch Hulk since their 6^th meeting since 2017, most recently meeting at ADCC 2019, currently 2-4 since 2017 against hulk Gaudio has the tools to defeat the frontrunner of bracket B, but will have to continue to be in top form post Europeans to do so.

João Gabriel Rocha and Gaudio met recently in the IBJJF Heavyweight GP that saw João win a referees decision over Gaudio. Although with the Kasai rule set this match may look different.

Hulk has faced everyone on his side of the bracket since 2017. But has also faced Cyborg and Vinny since 2017. Hulk has faced more members of the tournament in this time period than any of the other grapplers in the event.

Dante Leon Vs Renato Canuto

Another great rematch on the event, Dante is coming off of a recent gold medal performance at the IBJJF No-Gi worlds in 2019, and Canuto was part of one of the best matches of ADCC 2019 with Garry Tonon.

Their first match was a confidante for match of the year for Kasai, with Renato taking the contentious and extremely close points victory. The two grapplers were at the 2019 ADCC world championships in the -77 kg division. But did not meet for a rematch at the event. Although Kasai has a different rule set than ADCC both events are fundamentally points scoring victory criteria. This is a very exciting rematch between two very dynamic and exciting grapplers.