COVER STORY GARMO
COVER STORY GARMO continued from page 22 lose almost two pounds. “I didn’t want to cut weight and then compete,” he said. “I would be tired for the match.” Garmo’s wrestling coach Kyle Horr and his trainer Ty Jensen helped him get moving. They started jogging and sweating, which is exactly the protocol if you’re overweight before a fight. At the same time, Jensen worked Garmo’s calf, which had taken damage during an earlier match. “I was not in the headspace to continue on that day,” he said. “Thank God they were there. Basically, they babied me for 40 minutes.” Garmo stepped on the scale and his weight reflected what he needed to compete, which maxes out at 188 pounds in his class. Garmo’s first opponent was injured, so he won that round automatically and moved on. His next fight was against a “tough Israeli competitor” whom Garmo had seen fight but had yet to grapple with before. “I go into it feeling a looseness in my body,” he said, “and end up winning the match on points. But I dominated the entire time and it felt great. I wasn’t tired at all,” despite the morning loss and afternoon of cutting. In Garmo’s next fight, he was pitted against the current Pan-American champion Francisco Lo, a tough and dangerous fighter who’s full of power and destructive capability when it comes to submissions. “This is my biggest test,” Garmo remembered thinking. As the match began, the two fighters circled one another. For the first few minutes, the bout was relatively slow and uneventful. Garmo went for a move that Lo countered easily. In his counter, however, Garmo noticed the fighter left one leg open. “I captured his leg,” he said, “and rotated his heel 240 degrees. He’s very tough and he thought he could get out, but instead, I tore every ligament in his knee.” It was an explosive victory that put Garmo through to the medal rounds that would be held the next day. For the first time in his career, Garmo could become a black belt world medalist. He had been here before as a purple belt, which meant almost nothing compared to where he was now. In the semi-finals, Garmo was matched against a man named Rafael Paganini. The Brazilian grappler has many awards to his name, including three world championship medals before he earned his black belt and a first-place finish as a black belt in the 2019 South American Championship. “I felt the same way I did prior to the match against Lo,” Garmo said. “It was almost an elation, a tingling across the body. It puts me in this thing we call a flow state, and it gives me the absolute best performance I could possibly produce, and I believe my best performance can beat anyone in the world. When I have this feeling, I always win. It’s preordained, in a way.” As the fight commenced, Garmo vs. Paganini seemed a fair match. Before one minute elapsed, Paganini scored two points on Garmo, but he would not be deterred. After another minute, Garmo tied the score. The intense wrestling match ensued; each competitor eager to advance to their first world finals as a black belt. As the clock ticked downward, Garmo added two more points to his score, which put him up 4-2. The points, however, were not necessary. Just as they crossed the halfway point, Garmo captured Paganini’s leg, and much in the same fashion as his previous contest, rotated his heel until he forced a submission from the fearsome Brazilian, bringing the match to a dramatic end. “I finally believed that I belonged in that moment, in the finals of the world championship,” Garmo said about how he felt following the victory. “It wasn’t a close match. I dominated this guy and the guy before. I had this string of incredible wins leading up to this moment, and I knew this is where I was supposed to be.” Garmo’s next opponent, with whom it seemed he was destined to meet in the finals, was the famed Ronaldo Junior. At just 28 years old, Ronaldo had racked up extraordinary accomplishments in his BJJ career and Garmo placed second in the 2023 World IBJJF Jiu Jitsu No-Gi Championship by a razor-thin referee’s decision. is known for participating in both Gi and No-Gi BJJ. Notably, he has 13 firstplace tournament finishes as a purple or brown belt, including three World Championships and three Pan-American Championships. Most impressively, he was promoted to a black belt in 2019 and had accumulated six first-place finishes since then, including two Pan-American Championships, a tournament widely regarded as the second most important after Worlds. At the Gi Pan- American Championship, Ronaldo had won a top-3 finish in every black belt competition he’s participated in. Coming into this tournament, both Ronaldo and Garmo had never won a PHOTOS COURTESY DAVID GARMO World Championship as a black belt. According to Garmo, Ronaldo is an athletic fighter who likes to jump around and move fast. That style, when compared to his, gives Garmo a slight advantage. As the match drew closer, Garmo felt the same tingling sensation throughout his body; that which has, up until this moment, signaled a pre-destined victory. For six minutes, Garmo and Ronaldo had an extremely uneventful match, with neither fighter willing to budge an inch, and neither fighter forcing the other to ground. With three minutes remaining, Ronaldo voluntarily went to the ground in a defensive position called guard. After some brief grappling and not much progress, the finalists stood back up and resumed their begrudging match from earlier. With two minutes remaining, the commentators seemed to acknowledge the inevitable. The scoreless contest looked like it would need a referee’s decision. Until now, it was hard to decide a winner, according to the commentators, with Garmo possibly carrying a slight advantage because of his aggressiveness. With 11 seconds remaining, Ronaldo pushed Garmo out of bounds and into a scorekeeper’s table, breaking a TV screen in the process. Uninjured, Garmo stared down Ronaldo as they walked back to the center of the arena and finished off the last few remaining seconds of their impassioned duel. “Per the decision, I lost,” Garmo recalled harshly, a hint of disappointment in his voice. “It was as razor thin as it could be. You could’ve flipped a coin to decide the winner. I was heartbroken, and at the same time, extremely happy with what I had accomplished. I felt everything in the span of a few minutes.” Just a few months later, Garmo is not reliving the past. Same as ever, he will take what he can from his mistakes and improve. In the final match, however, those lessons are extremely hard to find. Garmo is confident that he will soon overcome all obstacles and achieve his goal of becoming the world champion. Until then, he will follow the same advice he offers to others. “The only time you’ll fail is if you stop,” he said. “You can fail every day for years and years and years. But if you don’t stop, you haven’t failed yet.” 24 CHALDEAN NEWS MARCH 2024
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