Abe Cross brought home the bronze medal from the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation World Master Championship held August 28-30 in Las Vegas. The master’s competition is for age thirty and up and over 12,000 competitors of all age, weight, and belt divisions competed.
The international competition brings athletes from all over the world to compete and is widely recognized as the largest jiu-jitsu event globally.
“The first guy that I went against was from Ukraine, the guy I lost to I think was British, and the guy who won, I think he was Russian but I don’t know that for a fact,” said Cross.
“That was the first time I’ve done that one [world championship]. I’ve done a few other tournaments in the past, just local tournaments, but that was the first world championship I have been to,” he said.
“Growing up wresting…I started wrestling in 98. I probably have had at least 300 matches in my life and then you know the jiu-jitsu matches are very similar in that regard so just having that I guess that background on a mat sport was really helpful,” said Cross.
Cross said, “Jiu-jitsu is more similar to a wrestling match in that as soon as the whistle blows, it’s action and it stays action until the clock runs out. You only reset the if you go out of bounds. The ultimate goal is you want to win by submission.”
Cross is the assistant dean of students at Lindsey Wilson University and also the head coach of the newly formed wrestling team for Adair County Schools.
