Welcome to ‘The Open GuardCast Jiu-Jitsu Podcast’, which is a project dedicated to promoting jiu-jitsu professionals. Tune in each wk, Wed at 2pm CST, for interviews, current events, & analysis of everything going on in the world of jiu-jitsu & submission grappling! Your host is Danny O’Donnell. In addition to hosting this podcast, he is an MMA journalist contributing here at BE, as well as at Black Belt Mag. O’Donnell himself is a BJJ black belt who trains at Marcio Andre Jiu-Jitsu Academy in Phoenix, AZ. We debuted the show last week at ‘Episode 121’, since we're picking up the pod -as its been running awhile now under its own steam. Over time, we'll have all previous 120 episodes uploaded into our BE Presents Playlist for the show. This week, Danny’s guest is Pro Jiu-Jitsu Athlete, Varun Mehrotra, who competes in the Blue Belt Rooster Weight Division, & recently won at the IBJJF Worlds 2021. He trains under Murilo Santana at Unity Jiu-Jitsu in NYC. They discussed the 2021 Worlds, training at Unity, gi & no-gi competition, & his plans for 2022. Enjoy the interview! Here is a run down of the 1st 10 questions, for the remainder of the interview, listen in... At 1:01 — Q1: Can you talk about what it was like training in NYC for the Worlds 2021? At 4:04 — Q2: Besides training M-Th at the gym, were you doing any type of training on your own that was really beneficial, maybe strength training & conditioning, or just extra drilling? At 5:48 — Q3: What kind of solo drills do you do & how do you find them to be beneficial? At 8:19 — Q4: Another thing you do is break down matches online. Is that another big part of your training? At 9:40 — Q5: You won the Blue Belt Division - Rooster weight at the 2021 Worlds... Can you talk about what it was like when you got there & talk us through some of your matches? At 11:52 — Q6: Going into it did you know you were going to have to play both top & bottom or did you have a more specific strategy but that’s just how the matches played out? At 13:10 — Q7: Mendes is preparing all of his fighters to win in the Black Belt Division... Do you study black belts in your division, LFWs, or whoever you're going to be competing against? At 14:44 — Q8: You mentioned ‘Pato’. Was there anyone else, any of the Black Belts, who really impressed you, who you think people should go back & watch... to either learn from or get inspiration from? At 16:11 — Q9: Is there anyone at Unity Jiu-Jitsu who you think people don’t know about yet, outside yourself, we should know & that they are gonna know in a couple of years? At 17:03 — Q10: When watching the blue belts recently, there was this one really tall Blue Belt Featherweight from Unity who was just killing it, do you know who that was? For the remaining half hour of the interview, be sure to listen in! You can follow Danny on twitter — @DannyOD_BJJ, or he can be found on instagram — @dannyod_bjj. The show’s instagram is @openguardcast, it can also be found on Facebook. You can check in on this week's guest, Varun Mehrotra, on his Insta — @shortthicboi and his gym is @unityjiujitsu. His gi sponsor is @suave_kimonos. If you enjoy our shows, give us a “heart”, share & subscribe on whichever BE Presents Podcast Channel happens to be your listening platform of choice: YouTube, iTunes & Apple TV, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Spotify, TuneIn, OverCast, Player FM, & Amazon Music – While you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to Bloody Elbow Presents; that way you’ll always be the first to get all of BE’s daily MMA offerings. For previous episodes of the show, check out our playlists on all of our BE Presents channels.