Marcus Buchecha On Overcoming 10 Straight Losses
Marcus “Buchecha” Almeida is undoubtedly one of the greatest BJJ champions in the sport’s history. However, he admits that he wasn’t born a champion and had to dedicate himself to training to become one.
On episode #38 of André Galvão’s podcast, Buchecha detailed that he nearly quit Jiu-Jitsu after losing his first ten matches.
Almeida didn’t mind after his first loss, as he had lost to the reigning blue belt champion and future Abu Dhabi pro champion and MMA fighter, Roberto Satoshi. He felt it was a learning experience to face a world champion in his first-ever Jiu-Jitsu match.
The next nine consecutive submission losses, however, would test his will to continue training. After losing his tenth match in a row, Almeida broke down crying and threatened to quit.
“I remember that I went to the bench crying. I said to Teco, ‘Teco, you’re crazy, you’re horrible, that’s not for me, I’m not going to compete anymore.”- Marcus Buchecha.
His coach bluntly responded with this: “You can be weak and quit or you can go back to the gym on Monday. It’s on you.”- Teco.
Buchecha didn’t quit and came back to the gym on Monday to train. He decided to enter another tournament and trained hard.
In his eleventh attempt, Buchecha finally put all the pieces together. He won his first-ever match and was happier than in any of his future thirteen world title wins.
“I can compare it with the world titles that I won in black belt, you know. It was like, the internal championship, team championship, but I was very happy.”- Marcus Buchecha.
Almeida was able to take that newfound confidence to become a multi-time world champion. His story proves that if you work hard and persevere, you can become a champion.
“I see that sometimes a lot of people lose a match and get discouraged and quit. It’s not like that, right? You have to persist. One hour, it happens.”– Marcus Buchecha.
Bobby is martial artist for almost 20 years with a BJJ black belt under Professor Sergio Miranda. He is also a karate black and former combat sports athlete, who loves all things grappling.