Can Kaynan Duarte Make ADCC History? | Road to ADCC Ep. 4
Follow Kaynan Duarte and the Victory Ultra team as they finish their camp for the 2026 ADCC World Championship.
Video Transcript
You can't talk about ADCC without talking about Dean Lister, a pioneer who revolutionized leg locks at a time when attacking the legs was still considered taboo.
Lister then helped establish Victory MMA as a cornerstone of the San Diego jujitsu scene.
Now, that legacy is entering a new era.
Led by four-time ADCC World Champion Kyan Duarte, Victory Ultra has assembled a dangerous new competition team with Marlon Tajic, Javier Zaruski, and Gustavo Batista joining Kyan in San Diego.
Today we're about to hit some open rounds only.
It's like a little bit more, week.
We're chilling a little bit.
We have been going hard the last few weeks, and then next week we'll pick up the pace again.
But today you'll see more open rounds, people going at it.
Probably you get some highlights, you know, and I'm not saying who to film, but From here on out to ADCC, practices are gonna be short and sweet.
We're gonna get in and out within an hour to an hour and a half.
Okay?
So try to be here on time.
Be here at 11:00 so we can get going right away.
Get out of here by 12:15, 12:30.
All right?
Appreciate you guys being here on time today.
Any questions?
Let's just kind of jog a little bit just to shake things loose, and I'll put you through.
All right, let's get it.
One, two.
Let's go.
Jogging.
So camp has been great.
We've been training pretty hard up to this point.
This week is a little bit of a deload week, so we're kinda, we're dropping things down a little bit with the, with the volume, keeping the intensity high.
Today's focus is pretty generalist.
We're gonna get them good and hot.
Just hit their main drills, hit their main areas.
Just get them kinda dialed in, and then we're gonna do two ADCC rounds, and that's it.
What we're gonna do is we're gonna have our four guys going to ADCC, Marlon, Kyan, Batista, and Javier.
The four, squares are gonna be theirs.
We can have two more groups in here, but then if you want to keep going during this round, I want you to use one of those two free mats.
We're gonna do a 15-minute round ADCC style.
Any questions?
Let's get it.
One, two.
Kyan's looking great.
It hasn't just been this camp, you know?
Like, it's been really, like, the last couple months, just upgrading, his tools, upgrading how he's going about his game from, from every aspect, right?
From standup, down to how he's passing, control, everything.
So he- he's made a lot of jumps, which a- at his level can be hard, right?
To see such good improvements.
But, I'm liking what, what, what we've been seeing so far.
So he's, he's jumped a lot of levels.
We've been training a lot for these past few weeks.
Every week we start increasing volume of training, also intensity, but this week we're gonna keep the intensity high, but the volume very low, so we give some time for our, our body recover so next week it can, we can start peaking, you know?
It's always good, but also the same time it's always challenging, you know?
It's a time for us to, for locking, be very focused.
It's always not easy to achieve the next step, you know?
But it's very worth.
Everyone's training really hard.
Yeah, the arm bar was good.
Now like last five minutes, and then now just time to focus and then don't lose any positions and look for a submission.
Everyone looks pretty sharp.
I think everyone's prepared.
For me, it is afternoon jujitsu right now, and it is a full-blown ADCC camp.
I think this is, like, the 25th year of me being around for ADCC camp, so it's pretty awesome.
I think 2002, getting Dean Lister ready for the, the ADCC that he won in 2003.
So, you know, this is kind of standard operating procedure around here, and I'm, I have 25 years of grappling dummy experience, you know, getting beat up by really good guys, which is what's going on here.
So it's awesome.
Bunch of, bunch of great people.
Very, you know I mean, the people in this matter just they're, they're savages, so it's awesome.
And it's another day.
Another What is it?
Tuesday afternoon.
Let's go.
In 2024, Kyan Duarte walked into T-Mobile arena and delivered one of the greatest performances in ADCC history.
Kyan submitted seven of his eight opponents dominating his way through both the minus 99 kilogram and absolute divisions.
By the end of the weekend, he had captured two gold medals and brought his career total to four ADCC titles.
I think it was a great performance.
I did, like, eight, fights and then seven submissions.
It's never easy to prepare for an event like this.
You need to be locking, be very focused, just training, eating well.
You need to do things very, very serious.
If you work well, you prepare well, you train smart, is, things go, go well.
Now, as Kyan prepares for the 2026 ADCC World Championship, there's more on the line than another gold medal.
Winning the minus 99 kilogram division would give Kyan his fifth title.
But to capture number six, he will have to defeat Yuri Simoes in the super fight A three-time ADCC champion and the 2022 absolute winner, Iuri brings his own decorated legacy to Poland, setting the stage for a showdown between two of the most accomplished competitors of their generation.
I compete against Iuri a long time ago, in 2019.
Every time that he compete at ADCC, he always come on his best form.
He beat so many, many big names on his career.
And now, we are be doing the super fight.
He's supposed to compete against Gordon, but he pull out, and gladly, Iuri accept the challenge, and I can't wait to achieve one more.
Nice.
Body lock.
Hip toss.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
So the camp has been great.
The camp is going really good.
The guidance, of course, of Kynan, the four-time champ, is awesome because, like, he has already done what we all wanna achieve, so it's easy to see guidance from him and, use his knowledge as a source to focus better in our training and know what we should work and aim for strategy-wise or, like, submission-oriented stuff.
So definitely helps a lot training with Kynan.
He's very consistent.
He shows up every day.
He tells us also, like, today we did a little bit harder, and tomorrow maybe we should tone it down a little bit.
So I'm working on some stuff, working on some ADCC style things, so I'm coming in as the kind of, rookie.
I just got my black belt this year.
Won trials, had the momentum go for that and won the belt at Main Character.
So I'm definitely excited to step up and show.
From the feet.
From the feet.
There it is.
Money.
Big hip toss.
Money.
With Marlon, you know, I've been working with him the last two years, and his wrestling has improved massively.
He watches a lot of wrestling.
His, his overall wrestling has improved massively.
His knowledge within leg entanglement and leg attacks are, are extremely high level.
He's very confident there.
So he's just been a absolute student of the sport, and that's probably the, the best attribute.
And he's so consistent.
That's the main theme with our guys that are doing really, really well, is they're extremely consistent, and Marlon brings a level of consistency that makes him a professional.
You know what I mean?
Like, he, he is an absolute consistent professional at his craft.
Marlon Sadiq may be entering his first ADCC World Championship, but he's already shown that he belongs alongside the sports elite.
After winning gold at the IBJJF NoGi World Championship as a brown belt, Sadiq carried that momentum into ADCC trials.
Now he enters a wide open minus 88 kilogram division with an opportunity to make an immediate impact.
I think the title's up for grabs, you know, and, there's a lot of first-time athletes in the ADCC right now.
So there's many guys who has never fought ADCC who's in the division.
So I think that's a pretty cool thing, you know?
Many divisions, since the last, like, three ADCCs has been pretty much stacked with mostly veterans, like people winning the trials again or so many people got invited.
It's not too many new trials winners.
So this is a little bit different ADCC.
A few returning champs are out, especially in the 88.
Bodoni's out, the first guy to ever win back-to-back titles.
And, it makes it a very interesting division, so a lot of new guys can come in and get their shot the first time and win a title, you know?
Yeah, Yeah, Marlon isn't the only member of Victory Ultra who fought his way to Poland.
Gustavo Batista secured his own ticket with a championship run at the South American trials, submitting four of his five opponents along the way.
To complete Victory Ultra's ADCC lineup, Javier Zaruski also received an invitation to compete in the minus 99 kilogram division.
Victory Ultra will send four athletes to Poland, each arriving through a different path, but all chasing the same goal.
Here, it's, it's a hard room.
They push ourselves every single day.
It's good to be a bit tired and to push yourself and to give, like, when you think you don't have anything left, but you still go for it.
I felt like that today, and I had an extra shift.
This is my second time fighting ADCC.
It's also a very special tournament because actually I'm half Polish.
Many people don't know that, but my grandfather is Polish, so all my father's side, we come from Poland.
My grandfather escaped the Nazis, so it was really tough for them.
Me coming back to my land, fighting as a world champion, as a first in history in my country, competing at the highest level in the sport, and I'm beyond excited to do my very best for myself and for them and for my family, for all the Jewish people and from all the people in Uruguay.
One, two.
One, two, three.
One, two, three.
So we are in, La Jolla now.
This one of my favorite spot.
Very healthy, a very fresh fish market.
So you can choose your fish.
They grill for you, and fill yourself.
Very good.
What do you usually get?
sometime I get some sandwich or But today I'm feeling kinda, like, tired, just want something more healthy, so probably gonna get a sea bass plate.
Very healthy.
I got a, a snapper for the first time, rice, some avocado, and some vegetables.
I like to keep my weight, the same weight that I'm gonna compete.
I don't like to be very heavy, you know, because affect my cardio, my mobility.
So I always like to be more lean, more light, so I can move better and feel better.
I'm grabbing the salmon with teriyaki marin- marinade and, on sourdough bread.
I give this one a solid 9 out of 10.
Like, the 10 out of 10 is the calamari stick sandwich, what you got, bro, so Very good.
Very good.
Very good, my friend.
ADCC World Championship is pretty much the Olympics of jujitsu.
Happen only every two years, and for you to be part of the ADCC, you either need to win trials, or you need to be invited.
And in my opinion, it's one of the hardest competition to win.
It's very technically, but also it's very physical competition, you know, where comes grapplers from everywhere, from the background of wrestling, sambo, jujitsu, many other martial arts.
It was so cool to watch ADCC in Vegas with, Mo who organized it, like, at the Thomas & Mack and then at T-Mobile and everything.
But I think it's cool we're being outside.
Now a lot of people who couldn't get visas to the US can come, too, so that changes things up.
You know, like, the Dagestanis are coming and some, like, guys from Asia, so it's like, it's pretty sick, I think.
It can be a very big shakeup this year.
It's, it's a lot of new stars that can be born.
One life, one fight.
The work has been done.
The rounds, the setbacks, and the countless hours inside the room have all led to this.
Because an ADCC Championship does more than add another medal to the wall.
It can transform a career and place an athlete's name alongside the legends of the sport.
On September 12th and 13th, the grappling world will turn its attention to Krakw, Poland.
The road is almost over.
ADCC is almost here.
Subscribe now at flowgrappling.com and get ready for the biggest event in submission grappling.
