Irvine, CA – After an explosive day of action the final for the black belt absolute division at the 2018 IBJJF Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championship has been set. 

Now he qualified to compete in the absolute final, Leandro Lo stands to win his seventh Pan, and depending on his performance tomorrow in the heavyweight division he could even go for a record-setting eight Pan black belt gold medals. 

His opponent will be Gutemberg Pereira, a first-year black belt representing GF Team. Pereira was 2017 brown belt World champ. Pans is his first major tournament since being promoted to black belt. 

“It’s dream come true, in my first big tournament as a black belt I get a spot in the finals and I fight a guy who I always watched when I was a blue belt. That’s going to be cool.” 

About how his style matches with Lo, Gutemberg said: “I know he likes to scrap, I like to scrap too, so it’s going to be a scrap!” 

Lo fought only twice, with a first round match against lightweight scrapper John Combs, a match Lo won 6-2. His next match would have been against Aaron Johnson of Unity JJ, but “Tex” – a student of Lo’s close friend and training partner Murilo Santana – elected to let Lo pass. 

His second match was against Keenan Cornelius, a much-anticipated showdown that had the crowd transfixed. Lo easily won 7-2, even passing the noted technician’s tricky guard. A sweep and an explosive double leg takedown racked up a further four points. 

To fight with him [Keenan] is always really difficult, very strategic, but I managed to do it and tomorrow I’ve got to come back strong. 

I didn’t avoid his game, but I’ve got three guys in my gym who do this game really well, I’m more or less used to it but he still managed to sweep me there once. I reversed him, but yeah – I’m happy. 

About Gutemberg, Lo had to say: “I know him, I know him well. A really good kid. I’ll go for my game, like always.”