Why It’s Lazy, Wrong, And Unfair To Compare Tayane Porfirio And Gabi Garcia
Why It’s Lazy, Wrong, And Unfair To Compare Tayane Porfirio And Gabi Garcia
Tayane Porfirio and Gabi Garcia are two completely different cases, yet the majority of commenters unfairly compare the two.
By Hywel Teague | The New Year has barely begun and Tayane Porfirio has already collected her first double gold medals of the season.
By winning both her weight and the absolute at the IBJJF European Championships in Lisbon, Portugal, this past week, she is following exactly the same process that saw her become jiu-jitsu’s most winningest female athlete in 2017. During her incredible run, Porfirio achieved something called the “Double Grand Slam” — earning weight and absolute titles at each of the four major IBJJF tournaments of the year, namely Euros, Pans, Brazilian Nationals, and Worlds.
With great success comes heightened attention, and as any successful person will tell you, not all of that attention is positive.
Tayane Porfirio is often compared to six-time world champion turned MMA fighter Gabi Garcia, and they do indeed share much in common. They’re both black belts representing the powerhouse Alliance team, and they both compete in the maximum weight categories permissible for female athletes. Porfirio has spoken about her admiration for Garcia’s achievements, and she considers her teammate as a point of reference for what is possible for bigger women in jiu-jitsu.
Unfortunately most of the comparisons we read on social media are lazy, wrong, and unfair.
Instead of drawing honest parallels between the two and highlighting their success in major international tournaments against world-class opposition, most commenters refer to the lowest of all hanging fruit and will deride Porfirio's achievements as a result of her size advantage and nothing more.
Let’s look at how and why Porfirio and Garcia are two completely different cases.
Their games
Pulling to guard, using lasso sweeps, inversions, and even reverse berimbolos... not what you’d expect from 110kg-plus athlete, but that’s what you’ll see from Porfirio. Her size is no restriction and her incredible flexibility and mobility allow her to spin, roll, and bend like any lightweight grappler. Her preferred submission attacks are collar chokes from the back or arm triangles and americanas from the mount, which few people escape from.
Garcia’s game relied almost exclusively on top position. In the rare occasions we saw her play from bottom it would be from closed guard, and she had a relatively low finishing rate with submissions such as the key lock from side control.
Athleticism
Garcia’s size and strength were the most apparent physical qualities, and it seems her advantages mostly stopped there. Slow, inflexible, and clumsy, she would often get taken down or reversed by better coordinated opponents literally half her size.
Porfirio, on the other hand, is one of those rare physical specimens whose capabilities would make her a fine athlete in almost any sport. She’s fast, she moves well from top or bottom and her flexibility is truly something incredible.
Tayane Porfirio Demonstrates Her Stretching Routine:
Standard of opposition
While Garcia’s impressive list of victories is full of big names such as Beatriz Mesquita, Mackenzie Dern, Luiza Monteiro, Kyra Gracie, Dominyka Obelenyte, and more, Garcia primarily competed in an era when black and brown belt women were lumped together in the same divisions.
Porfirio rose through the ranks by winning world as both purple and brown belts before making her emphatic debut in the black belt ranks, and she’s had to go head-to-head with some of the brightest stars of the modern era — not only major established names such as Dern and Mesquita but also the new wave of women black belts such as Nathiely Jesus, Jessica Flowers, and more.
Consistency of results
It’s true that Garcia claimed big wins such as the world, Pan, European and Brazilian National titles, but Porfirio did all of that in her very first year as a black belt, winning double gold at each tournament. Garcia’s record includes two ADCC and two Abu Dhabi World Pro titles, too, but it is worth mentioning that in 2013 Garcia was stripped of her IBJJF World and Pan titles due to breaching USADA rules on use of banned substances (albeit unknowingly).
Tayane Porfirio, 2018 European absolute champ
The Tayane Porfirio era
Garcia has stepped away from jiu-jitsu to focus on her MMA career in Japan. This left the door wide open for Porfirio to take over the scene. Were they to compete in the same tournaments, we’d likely see Porfirio bow out to Garcia due to the elder grappler’s seniority in the Alliance team. With Garcia out of the picture, this allows Porfirio to enjoy her well-earned time in the limelight. A fruitful career lies ahead of her, as do intriguing matches we have yet to see. A clash with four-time black belt world champion Dominyka Obelenyte is still yet to happen, and there are always new faces coming through and breathing new life into the black belt divisions. The smart money, however, would be that Porfirio reigns as undisputed champ from here on out.
See Porfirio in action
Tayane Porfirio vs. Mackenzie Dern
Tayane Porfirio vs. Beatriz Mesquita
