IBJJFOct 4, 2025 by Joe Gilpin
Road to Gold: Emily Leyva Uses Late Submission To Win Brown Belt Pan Gold
Road to Gold: Emily Leyva Uses Late Submission To Win Brown Belt Pan Gold
Atos Dream Team member Emily Leyva won brown belt no-gi Pan gold with a stunning late submission in the final match!
Atos's Emily Leyva needed all eight minutes to do it, but she found a late submission victory to earn No-Gi Pan gold in a small but tough bracket at light-feather. A part of the Atos's Dream Team, Emily kept a 100% submission rate through the tournament - her brown belt major debut after a purple belt world title earlier this year.
The IBJJF No-Gi Pan Championship is one of the toughest tournaments of the year, and the unofficial start of the IBJJF's no-gi season. Every match from the No-Gi Pans streams live exclusively on FloGrappling.
Semifinal
Early on against Leilani O'Neill-Rodriguez, Emily would set the tone with a wrestle up for 2 points - a lead she never gave up. She put the pressure on and would mount within the first few minutes of the match to blow the score open. Leilani would reguard and hunt legs but Emily's low body locking paid dividends with another pass in the final minute of the match. Up 12-0, she would snatch up the kimura and send it for the submission with 23 seconds left.
Finals
In the finals, Emily gave up some experience to top seeded Izabella Frezzo. They would double pull, with Emily eventually deciding to come up for the advantage. The match played out very tactically, with Emily breaking the guard and applying pressure with a few various strategies. Down late, her opponent opened up and wrestled up into a trap - an armbar that Emily would finish with only seconds left. If she'd given up the submission, she'd have lost the match.
Emily won gold again in her brown belt debut. After some early stumbles in her colored belt career, she seems to have genuinely turned a corner and is now one of the most exciting and promising young talents in that Atos room.