Michael Liera Jr. is an American black belt under Andre Galvao at Atos BJJ in San Diego. We spoke with him about Galvao’s upcoming super fight match at ADCC 2015, and what the keys to the training camp experience have been like.

What are your first takeaways as a black belt?

This whole year has been really tough. This year I got hurt in the beginning half and it really crushed me. And then I came back and had just enough time to prepare for worlds, just like maybe a two-month camp, so I just had enough time. I got the quarterfinals, which is a great result but not the result I was looking for. Really what it left me was like now I'm just optimistic for next year. I know where I'm at. I know I have the rest of the year to kind of prepare for and yeah, I'm just ready for next year now. It is what it is. I didn't get to place, I didn't win, but I'm happy with where I'm at right now in relation to Worlds 2016, so I'm ready, I'm excited.

What has the vibe been like?

From like January to June we have the Gi camp, so January to like March-April we get ready for Pan Ams. And them March-April to June we get ready for Worlds and that camps is a lot different than the ADCC camp. Our Gi camp we train real hard technically and we get our minds ready for Jiu-Jitsu but ADCC camp is more like we get ready to go to war. It's less technique and more just like getting physically ready and getting our wresting ready for the ADCC. I'm not going to be there to compete, but we have five guys from our gym going and we're preparing like seven guys to go to ADCC, including Dean Lister and one other guy. With those group of guys we just try to get them ready for the grueling, No Gi battles, the wrestling battles so it's a little bit different. It's much more grueling than the Gi camp.

Andre Galvao has a really big match in ADCC. What has training been like with him?

He's going on to his second super fight now. The last time, in 2013, he fought Braulio, now he's fighting Cyborg. With him it's always like, I feel like the ADCC style is a lot more stalling, but with him he likes to press it the whole 20 minutes or 30 minutes or however long he's fighting. His thing is just not stopping. We put him through some really, really, really hard tasks; getting shark tanked with like fresh guys round after round after round after round and he's just trying to push through it even when his body is broken, even when his mind is broken, you just try to keep pushing him to where he keeps going. That's kind of our mentality for his training camp for ADCC right now.

What do you expect from that match?

I can't really put my finger on how that match is going to go. I do see Cyborg is a real tough opponent. He's bigger, he's strong, he's flexible, but Professor Andre definitely has, I believe he has like a tighter style than he does. If he gets to the back, it's over, I know that. If he gets to a great passing position, it's going to be really hard for Cyborg to come back. And I'm really interested to see how Cyborg is going to handle just Professor Andre's pace. I know he's going to come at him for 30 minutes, but it's a fight at the end of the day and we'll see. We'll see, I don't know. That's how I see the match going.

You brought in some high-level wrestlers to the camp. What has it been like training with those wrestlers?

Our main coach for the ADCC camp, the same guy that led our camp in 2013, is Fred Leavy. He's a four-time All American I believe or something along those lines. Even though he's not the most versed in jiu-jitsu, he has a really great mentality for camp, for like putting a camp together. When we should be going harder, when we should wrestle a little bit, so he's been leading the camp in that way and then also he helps us a lot with our wrestling because in ADCC, unlike every other jiu-jitsu tournament basically there's a lot of wrestling involved. Most of the time, jiu-jitsu is secondary to the wrestling. The better wrestler is going to win, even if the jiu-jitsu is close. We try to use all of his wrestling drills and his wrestling background to try to sharpen our skills in that field and then also we have a guy that comes down occasionally and his name is Darrel Christianson. He's the Olympic coach or something, something along those lines, but he has phenomenal technique wrestling. He's a Greco-Roman guy so he's helping us a lot with our clenches and different stuff that we're not used to. Just to be able to have those tools with us – we're trying to take much of an advantage as we can.

For the modern day jiu-jitsu competitor that are not trained in wrestling is a big mistake or more prevalent?

For the ADCC camp, it is absolutely necessary that you train wrestling. You can't survive with just jiu-jitsu anymore. For the Gi, I wouldn't say you don't need it, but if you do have in your repertoire, if you do have that strong wrestling background, it makes your guard better, it makes your passing better, it makes your conditioning better. There's so many pros to wrestling, so many advantages you can take from training wrestling so we try to wrestle as much as we can, even during the Gi
season. But yeah the Nogi you need it. I see it not only from the feet, not only does the wrestling come from the feet. When we play guard and you start to sweep, you have to finish with either a single leg or a double leg or you're coming up for the clench. Everything comes down to wrestling in the Nogi. It helps astronomically.