After winning both ADCC European Championships 2010 and 2011 you qualified for the ADCC World Championships 2011. How has your last grappling year been?
It has been okay. I have been taking some time off the competitions to develop my game and to work on my weak areas. I have also been training almost exclusively no-gi to be prepared to fight in ADCC.

Five Finns has qualified for the Worlds 2011, which factor do you think has been the most important to this?
I think the Finns’ success in competition is based on hard but smart competition-driven training and on the other hand borderless co-operation between Finnish academies. Training hard with good fighters has a tendency to make you a good fighter, which is proven in heavier weight classes, in which all three qualifies Finns are coming from one academy. As a side note I also think that no-gi grappling is very popular in Finland compared to many other countries.

At the European Championships in Turku I noticed that Finns tend to go for a lot of heel hooks and foot locks, is my observation correct?
I think that is not too far from the truth. We have guys who have made lower body submissions their specialty, and overall I think Finnish grapplers may use them quite a lot because of the aforementioned no-gi prevalence.

At the Worlds 2009 you fought Jeff Monson, can you tell us about that fight?
Well, not too much to be said, hehe. I pulled the guard and got one minus point, and ended up losing by that minus as neither of us was not able to score any points. I think Jeff had too warnings for passivity, but that was not enough to cause a minus point that would have evened the score.

How about a rematch in the first round against Jeff?
For sure! Jeff is a rock solid competitor and very hard to beat, but I think in ADCC 2011 that is the only kind of opponents available!

How are you preparing for the ADCC Worlds 2011?
You know, the usual regimen; ju-jutsu, lifting weights, running. I train quite lot, about ten training sessions per week. As the competition time gets closer, all other training are cut down and more focus on no-gi sparring. Closer to competition I also go training more in other academies to adjust my game to guys outside my regular sparring partners.

What do you think about competitors list so far?
It is simply amazing. So many good guys: Werdum, Abreu, Vella, Monson, Magalhaes, Silva, Rinaldi… It will be very tough competition and it is very hard to say who will come out at the top. But there is also always room for some surprises, watch out!