Sixteen-year-old Tye Ruotolo (Atos) defeated Vagner Rocha (Fight Sports) in his Fight 2 Win debut, while Marcos “Yemaso” Torregrosa, Jaime Canuto, and Josh Hinger also won big in Richmond, California. 

Do not underestimate the new generation. 

Tye Ruotolo has recently taken leaps in his jiu-jitsu career. After making a statement in his ADCC debut, he says it’s hard to go back to “child’s play” and prefers to test himself in super fights with more open rulesets. That led him to a superfight with the deadly Vagner Rocha. Aside from his turbulent style, Rocha is known for getting into the head of his opponents, from collar ties and takedown entries that look like striking to verbally provoking his opponents during matches; this was possibly Tye’s deepest challenge yet. 

With a lot of hand fighting and movement, the match largely took place on their feet with most of the action going down in just the last couple of minutes. While Tye favored ankle pick attempts, Vagner consistently hunted the single leg, finally landing a takedown near the end of the match. Tye was ready for it and immediately retaliating with a triangle attack, the only submission attempt of the night. While Vagner set the pace for the remaining minutes of the match, Tye kept up alert for any last-minute submission openings. After a 10-minute main event, Tye Ruotolo proved he lives up to the hype earning the unanimous decision over Vagner Rocha. 

Marcos “Yemaso” Torregrossa (Yemaso Jiu-Jitsu) defended his Masters Welterweight title for the first time against Sean Nikmorad. Now, with two victories secured on the F2W stage since coming back from a knee surgery which forced him into a year-long absence from competition, “Yemaso” was extremely dominant executing a tight and traditional game over Sean Nikmorad to retain the title by unanimous decision.

Watch Fight 2 Win 131: Ruotolo vs Vagner Full Event Replay

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Jamie Canuto (GF Team) came back in impressive fashion in his match with Edwin Najmi (Gracie Barra). Edwin kicked off the match stunningly as usual, with his signature flying triangle. But that was the last we would see Edwin in the lead. The rest of the match was a one-sided, succession of attacks by Canuto. After making his escape from a triangle that kept him at bay for minutes, Canuto left no room for Najmi’s tricks imposing rapid-fire attacks, passing, and attacking both a cross choke and armbar from mount. Though he wasn’t able to get the finish, he earned a unanimous decision victory over “The Kid.”

Three-time No-Gi World Champion Josh Hinger (Atos) outworked Murilo Santana (Unity) for the unanimous decision victory. While the No. 3-ranked -88kg grappler says he “sucks” at superfights, but there was nothing lacking in his performance against Santana. While Murilo was content to pull guard when his stand up was ineffective, Josh was adamant to stay on top and impose his game. While no significant submission attacks were made, Josh remained the aggressor for the duration of the match, which was enough to get the nod from all three refs. 

Be sure to check out all 40 matches on the card. The brown belts saw the highest concentration of submissions from the whole events including some epic wins:

• CTA blue belt, Zandra Fountila, took on a challenge for a no-gi match with brown belt Charize Apostol and got the tap via armbar from a triangle. 

• Brown belt submission of the night went to Jacob Pangelinan for his calf slicer over Doug Ancey.

• Atos’ Jacob Kassama took the purple belt welterweight strap with a unanimous decision victory over Tyler Shew.