The Return of the Absolute King /// By: Bear Quitugua

An interview with one of the greatest jiu-jitsu players of our time.

Photo cred: Alex Nazari (@alexnazari on Instagram)

The very first time I saw Marcus Almeida, known simply as “Buchecha,” compete was at the 2010 IBJJF World Championship in California. That year was no different than the last 10 years of watching jiu-jitsu in California, as my goal was always to watch and seek out the future stars of our sport, and I was told through the wire that there was this young 19-year-old brown belt kid from the Checkmat team that had been winning everything in Brazil.

I think the biggest thing that I noticed right away was his way of pushing for the submission and finishing fights. After that first time seeing him on the mat, each year would come around and Buchecha started to become more and more of a fan favorite in both his weight class and the absolute open class division. Back then, I was just an average fan like everybody else who loved his jiu-jitsu style and saw him as a superstar in the sport.

Over the years we have become good friends and I got to know him more as a person. When the opportunity came to work together last year, we could not pass it up and added him to our team at Shoyoroll. Buchecha is one of the most exciting submission fighters of our time and arguably one of the most decorated heavyweight and open class champions in our sports history. These facts alone are nothing short of amazing but the bigger thing that I think makes Buchecha special is that he has a very humble past and although he is the most sought after grapplers in the world, he still finds time to be an example for future generations. He always has a good energy and great vibe—which has not changed much at all after all his years of success and being at the top. This is what makes him ultra special in my opinion.

Photo cred: Ryan Hahn (@ryan.hahn on Instagram)

What are some of the things that go through your head minutes before a match?

Everything starts from the morning, but before the fight, it’s a storm of thoughts in my head. The last fight is the one that I remember more. I think about a lot of things before the fight… and that’s the tricky part because if I win, I have to prove that I came back. I have to prove that I’m the old Buchecha. I’m going to be exposed. I’m going to be doing everything. But if you went with this in your head to show other people, it’s not the right thought, you know? You’re not going with the right reason. So before you go there and perform, you have to have the right reasons. When I’m really nervous, I think-- why I’m doing this, you know? I start thinking why I want to be here. I’m here because I want to be here. I choose to be here. That’s the life I want to live. I choose to train hard everyday. I want to be here because for me, that’s my passion, that’s my joy, that’s my work. Jiu-Jitsu is everything that I do in my life. So I started putting the right thoughts in my head… I choose to be here, I want to be here, and I want to have some fun, you know? “Why am I doing this?” Not for somebody else – it’s for me. That’s what drives me to compete - to make me a better fighter, a better person and go there and try to perform and put everything I did in the training… today, now. Then all the nervousness and the excitement starts to change to excitement to go on the mat. I get kinda nervous before warming up but before I get into the area to step into the fight, I’m changed. I’m totally changed. I look at my opponents and I see him them nervous… and I‘m getting excited to fight and have some fun. So once I step on the mat, everything is different. All the nervousness is gone and I’m there to compete and do my best. I see a lot of people with the thoughts like… “I can’t lose, I can’t lose.” I go there, and of course I wanna win. Of course if you sign up you want to win but I go there either to kill or die. Not to win by an advantage. So I think that’s the main thing – you have to find the right reasons to do anything. Not just in jiu-jitsu but in life. So if you’re doing it for you, if you doing for yourself because you wanna be there, I think that’s the right reasons. That’s my reasons. So if you don’t find your own reasons, I think you’re wasting time. You’ll never be 100% there. So that’s how I feel and that’s how I deal with my head before the fight.

Even as a lower belt, I pretty much always won the whole thing so I always went in as favored. But once I got the black belt, I was the underdog just like everybody else. I wasn’t favored. So I always went to prove myself. Of course when I became the favorite, there was a lot of pressure on me. So with a lot of pressure, I start thinking with the wrong reasons and sometimes if you’re weak you let the pressure get in your head like… “if you win you win this year, you can be the only one in history to win 4 times…” but yeah, like whatever, who cares. But at the end of the day, that was in the back of my head. And I think that was something that didn’t really go well for me. That’s no excuse because I lost but it was something to make me think more. It’s the brain you know, your brain is something that you have to control, not let it control you, right? It’s kinda confusing but it’s true. You have to deal with your head and find the right reason for doing what you do. If you don’t find the right reasons, like I said, you’ll be tough and wasting time. You gotta give your 100% otherwise you’re not gonna be lucky.

What are the first 3 things that go into your head when you lose a match?

There is loss… and LOSS… you know? There is not many losses but there’s a few and always when I’m losing, even if there’s still one second on the clock, I’m still fighting. Even if I lose but give my best, my 100%, I don’t feel like I completely lost. I feel really sad and I think that happened one time when I felt like I really lost because I gave up. I saw on the clock that there was a minute left and I was losing by 2 points and I just gave up. And that was really when I felt like I gave up. But if I lose for fighting until the end, it’s something different. Always when I lose, I try to see the good and bad about the loss. I don’t lose often but even when I win, I try to see the good and bad. I never get comfortable. I won but it was a hard fight… the guy passed by guard… the guy took me down… the guy swept me… so I always go home happy because I won but on the other side, I made a lot of mistakes. I won but I sucked in the fight. So I don’t take the bad side with just the loss but I learned to do this with the wins too. I never got comfortable with the win. I try to learn the lessons with the wins and not wait to lose to try to change anything. Every fight, every tournament, I take it as a lesson - winning or losing. But if I really lose because I gave up, it’s something that is going to make me feel really bad. It happened once or twice and it was one of the worst things because I chose to give up because I couldn’t win. It’s something that you have to deal with so it’s your choice.

I always want to be better than the person I was yesterday. So if I lose because the guy was better than me, but I know in the level that I am, I can be better than anyone if I train too. Of course if you lose because the guy was better than you but maybe because you didn’t give your best too. I want to get better not because I want to be better than my opponents but because I want to be a better fighter, a better person and to always improve. It’s not just about winning but it’s about performing better. When I am doing the right things in a match and in training, I feel good. It’s about learning and an experience. I am chasing to be the greatest.

What do Championships mean for you now compared to your first one at black belt?

I don’t think it’s about a championship, but about every fight. I don’t train different for a championship or a super fight, because it’s always my head on the line. If I accept a fight, it doesn’t matter what it is, I’m gonna put myself into it 100%. That became my goal and my focus. It means everything to me until it happens. It doesn’t matter if I lose one championship- a big one – if I commit to something, I’m going all the way. Until I finish it, I’m not going to rest.

What are the biggest pressures you face internally as an athlete?

I think that with after the surgery, that’s when I started to think about others and myself. The coming back was more personal. A lot of people don’t have sportsmanship and when I hurt my leg, I heard a lot of people clapping and that made me feel bad as a person. If I was fighting someone and they got hurt, I would feel bad. But when I got injured, I heard people clapping and they were happy that I got hurt. I didn’t want to end my career that way – going in the ambulance to the hospital. I told myself I’m going to come back and I’m going to prove that I can do better than this and I’m not going to leave the tournament in an ambulance. I’m going to go to the tournament and do my best. And I was going to do different. Once the day came, a lot of people were wondering if I was the same, but I wasn’t listening anymore because it was about myself. Even when I won the first match, I was really emotional because it was in the same area that I got hurt and after that day, it was the worst year of my life. People don’t know but I know how hard it was. I won the fight 6-0 but everyone thought that I should have won in the first 30 seconds. Even a lot of my friends thought I wasn’t the same anymore and that got in my head a little. But the focus and the pressure was on myself and I was going to overcome. The second and third fight were much better and I won the whole thing and proved to myself that I came back. I think that was a lot of pressure and a lot of things in my head – I thought about quitting and I thought about getting a job because my knee wasn’t the same. It was one year of pressure in my own head but it was something that motivated me at the same time. The pressure was with myself and not about the others. Since I was born in this sport, I’m dealing with pressure so that isn’t going to change anything for me – the yelling isn’t going to change anything for me… people that think they’re going to get into my head talking about something – they don’t know what it’s like to do the finals and have everyone in the arena looking at you… everyone wants to see the favorite to lose. Pressure like that is fine for me, I got used to it. But the pressure of coming back to see if I am the same or not was the worst pressure that I felt.

I think the injury totally changed my life as a fighter and a professional. It made me a better fighter and a better person. Because the time off gives you a lot of time to think about things you would never think about. I felt useless for a long time… people forget about you… and you see who is going to be with you around that time. There is a lot of deception with people you expected to be there for you and were not. I think the injury made me feel reborn in the sport, like what I feel today is the same desire that I felt in 2012 when I was hungry to win. I wasn’t as hungry as before and after that I gave more value… I know how much it is worth to me to be healthy and training. Even if I cannot train to compete, I want to be on the mat sweating and having a good time. That’s a part of me already. It made me give more value of everything that I have in life because if I’m not able to do what I love, I’m useless.

Nobody wants to be injured but it ended up being good for me because it gave me a new perspective.

How do you deal with fear?

I don’t have fears about these things because you have to deal with that… not the fear the word – but more nervous. If it were fear, I wouldn’t be doing it.

You give up positions sometimes and lose points on risky moves a lot of the time. Most competitors don’t risk this because they want the victory at all cost, even if there is no submission. What’s your theory behind your style of grappling?

I don’t know… because when I started competing, I remember fights that I had when I was winning by 20 points and I was so scared to stop because I didn’t want to lose by submission. I was always scared to stop and get submitted so I was always moving. I always want to be ready to fight the entire time limit but if I have to do 9 fights to win both divisions, I don’t want to fight 90 minutes so I always go there to fight as least as I can because if I submit a guy in a minute, I don’t waste my muscles or cardio. I always give my best and train to give my best, not to be comfortable. I’m ready for any situation. That’s how I train and that’s how my style is. That’s why I train so hard – so I can be comfortable in any situation.

What motivates you to continue to be the best?

I think that’s a hard question but from where I came from and where I am – I came from nowhere, I am here and I never thought to myself that I would get here and nowadays I have to find a lot of reasons to keep motivating myself. I think what really drives me is to do what’s never been done. It’s something that always drives me and wants me to push harder and go further. To do what’s never been done – to make my family proud and to be unique.

Do you believe the best people in every sport are a little bit crazy in their own head that makes them different from the rest?

It’s something that it’s hard to define in one word. It’s not just “crazy” but it’s kinda like crazy but in a good way. There’s crazy in bad ways… one thing I notice of most of champions that I look up to is that they are really selfish. Not selfish in the worst way, but you put what you want over everything. It becomes so much focus that it becomes selfish. Not in a bad way but if your family understands you, that’s what really matters. If your friends who are really your friends, they will understand, they’re not gonna judge you. Who is really with you will understand. I have priorities in my life, of course my career and family is the most important but I think that is the most common thing that I see with athletes at this level.

There’s rumors you like the Hollywood scene, could we see you on a set one day?

That’s something that I really would be happy if it happens. Living in California, I came a long way, far away from here, and I’m here… just a couple miles away so if something happens for me going that way I would go for sure. Maybe, who knows? It’s kinda like a dream to see how everything happens. I love movies and I would love to work with stuff like that even if it’s not acting but working with actors, I would like something like that. And if I ended up on the big screen, that would be great but if not, I’d like to be around and experience this Hollywood scene. When I know actors and meet them in person, I always like to see how they are in a real life because the characters are different. It’s something that I enjoy and I’m a big fan of the movie industry… but who knows? The future is bright. It’s a long way so let’s see.

How do you want people to remember you as an athlete?

I think in any sport, that is your time. I think I have a good time and I think it’s not my time – it’s been my time. But sooner or later I’m going to stop and sooner or later there will be a new Buchecha, a new guy winning everything but I don’t want to be the guy that people are going to remember as someone they didn’t like. I want to be a guy that people will remember with good memories – someone that made a legacy, someone that was a nice guy, really polite, he made a lot of friends and everyone likes him, the way that he fights, the way that he is inside and outside of the mats – I want people to remember me as a good person. I want to be remembered as a positive role model, a guy that everyone wants to be around – with good energy and good vibes.

My parents raised me to be humble and always taught me and my sister what is right and wrong. I think that is the biggest reason why I am the way that I am today. I saw people close to me who became great athletes change. I didn’t want a medal or a title to change who I am. In everything that I conquered, I never thought I would travel all over the world, I never thought I would learn English, I never thought I would meet so many people, so many idols in and outside of jiu-jitsu. The way that I am and jiu-jitsu gave me everything. Everything that I have right now, I want it to be a seed for the future. So if you seed good stuff, you will get good stuff in the future. If you seed bad stuff, attitude and things like that in the future, you’re not going to have friends. I still remember everyone that helped me get to Worlds when I had to hold raffles to be able to travel and fight. I have been there so there’s no reason to change. Of course, now I’m in a better situation but I still treat everyone the same way – from the guy who cleans the floor or the guy that owns the building – that’s how my parents taught me. That’s what I think is the right thing to do in life and it doesn’t matter what I have achieved in the sport or in life, I am not going to change the person that I am.