Every tournament that comes around brings with it many questions. “Who will win, and how?” is always number one, but this weekend we’ve got some very specific questions about what’s to come. 

1: Will Joao and Paulo Miyao berimbolo their way through the tournament, or will they demonstrate their evolving passing game? They still pull guard first, but Paulo especially has shown an increased willingness to get on top and look to pass. Will we see them fight from top this weekend, or will the revert back to their inverting ways as they search for the four points for getting the back? 

2: We did a study of Erberth Santos’s judo not so long ago, the only question on our minds is how long until he bounces somebody’s head off the mat? 

3: Faisal Alkitbe is the only competitive black belt to come out of the United Arab Emirates. The question is, does the UAE’s best black belt have a solid shot at the podium? With nine fighters in his division he’ll need to win four matches against some of Brazil’s toughest grapplers to get gold. 

4: When BJJ Hacks released their video profile of Leandro Lo in 2014 everyone wanted to know who was the purple belt he was training with? His incredibly tough and skilled partner was Wellington Luis, known as ‘Alemao’, and since then he won Abu Dhabi World Pro as a brown belt and now fights in the black belt ranks. So can Leandro Lo’s protege can win his first major black belt title? It won’t be easy, ‘Alemao’ has got his hands full in the 85kg division with the likes of Jaime Canuto and Partick Gaudio of GF Team and Diogo ‘Moreno’ of Soul Fighters.

Watch the 2015 Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Jiu-Jitsu World Tour Rio LIVE on FloGrappling right here!