Rui Alves Drilling Lapel Attacks and Guard Passes

20-year-old purple belt Rui Alves of Dream Art Alliance is known for his creative use of the lapel, and is one of the best young exponents of the modern lapel guard game. He told us that he started practising it at home with his dad, who is a black belt, as a way to control the distance against opponents as he used to suffer from claustrophobia and didn't like being on bottom. This led to him developing a sophisticated series of attacks that use worm guard, squid guard and more. How did he come up with it? "I watched a lot of Keenan's matches," he said.