Top heavyweight grappler Victor Hugo spoke to Grappling Insider about how he developed his trademark ‘Big Man Flow’ style.
Victor Hugo is widely recognized as one of the best heavyweight gi and no-gi submission grappling competitors in the world – but he grapples nothing like a typical heavyweight.
Standing at 6 feet, 4 inches tall, and weighing over 250 pounds, the Six Blades representative is a large athlete even by heavyweight standards. Known for his trademark “Big Man Flow,” Hugo possesses one of the sport’s most dangerous and dynamic guards, regardless of weight class. He has used that flexible and movement-based guard game to rack up accomplishments at the highest levels of BJJ, including multiple IBJJ gi world titles, an IBJJ no-gi world title, and recent impressive victories over the likes of Nick Rodriguez, “Big” Dan Manasiou, and two-time ADCC champion Kaynan Duarte.
Hugo is currently slated to take on 2023 IBJJF no-gi world champion Javier Zaruski at Who’s Number One 24 on Thursday, June 20. After that, in August, he will compete for a $1 million prize at the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational, having declined his invitation to compete at the 2024 ADCC World Championships.
Hugo recently sat down with Grappling Insider to speak about a variety of topics, including opponents he’d like to face in the future, his evolution as a grappler, how to develop a strong competition mindset, and, of course, his Big Man Flow.
This interview was conducted before Victor Hugo had committed to compete at the Craig Jones Invitational, and before his opponent at WNO was switched from Luke Griffith to Javier Zaruski.
First and foremost, Hugo says that larger athletes who want to develop a more effective, less strength-based game must shift their mindset and approach to grappling like a smaller athlete. This means purposely putting oneself in bad positions – positions where they would rarely find themselves were it not for their size and strength.
“They have to think of themselves as a small person and put themselves in positions where someone bigger than they are would put them…
“Even though somebody doesn’t put you there, you still gotta work those things. Find ways to put yourself in those positions that you’re usually not there, that you’re not used to, and work on them, try to work on them in a smart way…
“If I train as I compete, none of the brown, blue, and purple belts that I have here would get near to my back or near to my side control. But what I have to do is I have to allow myself to give those positions… That’s probably why, when it comes to heavyweights, my skill is a little bit different than most of them.”
By constantly putting himself in disadvantageous positions, Hugo developed efficient, technically sound escapes and air-tight defense. He says that many heavyweight grapplers almost never practice escaping bad positions, so when they find themselves there in competition, they are lost.
He added:
“I think for big dudes, the main thing is forgetting you’re big and that you can use your superpower, which is being big, to get out of bad positions and put yourself in those situations. Because even though 90 percent of the people can’t get you there, there will be 10 percent who will, and you have to think of what am I gonna do when the 10 percent show up and put me there. Also, thinking in the long run, what am I gonna show my students one day when I become a black belt and I don’t have the knowledge and the hours spent there?”
Beyond just escaping poor positions, Hugo prides himself on a guard game built for the monster top players he competes against in the heavyweight division.
He says that his efficient and nearly impassable guard is a result of his training with renowned pressure passers like Xande and Saulo Ribeiro, as well as Rafael Lovato Jr:
“I think you have to rely on skill, you have to rely on your ability to use the right things when you’re in a defensive position… Xande, Saulo, Lovato, all those guys, for years, their style has been pressure. So whenever you have somebody that’s really good at pressure in the training room, someone has to develop the defense… So I think having that style with me in the training room helped me a lot to have a strong defense system. Even for smaller people, you still can defeat someone bigger if you rely on the right things to defend yourself.”
