Cyborg Abreu's BJJ Triangle from Tornado Guard
When this Roberto 'Cyborg' Abreu clip first ran on Jiu Jitsu Style in September 2014, the tornado guard was still one of the more polarising positions in BJJ. Cyborg was the man of the moment —…
Words: Jiu Jitsu Style
When this Roberto 'Cyborg' Abreu clip first ran on Jiu Jitsu Style in September 2014, the tornado guard was still one of the more polarising positions in BJJ. Cyborg was the man of the moment — the reigning ADCC absolute champion, the largest competitor in the sport to be inverting and spinning underneath people for fun, and the head coach of a Miami team that had quietly become one of the deepest in the world. The short note we ran at the time pointed at a sneaky triangle finish out of the position and let the video do the rest. Twelve years on, the technique reads even better than it did then, because the guard he was teaching from is no longer an outlier.
The shape of the move is the part most people miss on a first watch. Cyborg's tornado guard isn't a single hook or grip configuration — it's an inverted, shin-on-shin frame where the bottom player threads one leg through the top player's legs while keeping the other shin posted across the hip. From the outside it looks chaotic; from inside it is a small forest of angles. Your training partner is busy fighting your shin and your sleeve, his head is being pulled into the gap your knee is opening, and his posture is committed forward. The triangle is sitting there waiting. Cyborg's job in the clip is just to show you how to close the door.
What makes the finish quietly clever is the same thing that makes the whole tornado system work. He doesn't chase the triangle by shooting his leg over the shoulder and hoping. He uses the position's own momentum. As the top player tries to flatten the shin and pass, Cyborg lets the trapped arm get a little deeper, lifts his hips for a half-beat, and threads the free leg across the neck on the exit. The angle is already there. The squeeze is already there. The Brazilian Jiu Jitsu triangle, like every good submission, is mostly geometry that's been pre-arranged by the position underneath it.
Why the tornado guard aged well in BJJ
A decade ago, the tornado guard had a reputation as a heavyweight novelty — a position only Cyborg himself could really make work, on bigger bodies, in matches he was usually winning anyway. That has not aged well as a criticism. The DNA of the tornado — inverted shin frames, shin-on-shin entries, dynamic guard retention from your back — is now part of how the entire modern guard game gets taught. Mikey Musumeci finishes triangles out of inverted positions that would have made a 2014 coach uneasy. Gianni Grippo has built half a career on attacking the neck from underneath in ways that lean on the same principles. The Ruotolo brothers, Cole Abate and Tainan Dalpra all live in some version of the spinning, shin-heavy bottom game that Cyborg was selling at IBJJF Worlds and ADCC long before it had a marketing name.
And Cyborg himself hasn't gone anywhere. Fight Sports is still posting world-medal results, the school still pumps out competitors, and Roberto's seminars still draw crowds in every city he visits. He's now closer to elder statesman than super-heavyweight surprise package, but the position he showed in that Jiu Jitsu Style clip is in the bloodstream of the sport he helped build.
What the rest of us can take to the gym
For the rest of us, the lesson goes a little beyond the technique. The submissions that look strange to your jiu-jitsu eye today are very often the ones the next generation will treat as fundamentals. The tornado guard looked weird in 2014, and it produced a triangle anyway, because the underlying ideas — frame with your shins, off-balance with your hooks, finish with whatever the angle hands you — were sound. Borrow them. You don't need to play the full tornado to take a sneaky triangle out of shin-on-shin. You just need to be willing to look at the guard from upside down for a few rounds.
Drill the entry with a patient partner. Train the finish from the position the top player actually gives you, not the one you wish they'd give you. And the next time someone tells you a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu position is too niche to be useful, point them at Cyborg, 2014, hunting a triangle from a guard the rest of the sport hadn't fully worked out yet.
See you on the mats.
Originally published in Jiu Jitsu Style, 25 September 2014. Refreshed for 2026.