In just a few short days, the 2017 Mundial championship will give us a metric ton of high-level jiujitsu to watch. Until then, we’re going to have to rely on previous matches.

A blue belt friend of mine is disappointed he won’t get to see Rafa Mendes compete this year, and asked me for some must-watch Rafa match recommendations. I chose 6 matches that cover the span of his black belt career, trying for some diversity — hence the span from 2009 to 2016, with three gi matches and two nogi matches.

Yes, there are three matches with Cobrinha here, but that’s because this was an epic rivalry between two of the best ever (and who would have bet on Rafa retiring before a man who is a decade his senior? If you think I’m rooting for Cobrinha this year, you’d better believe it).

MATCH ONE: Let’s start with the match that earned Rafa his first, ADCC title, the 2009 finals versus Cobrinha. Both Rafa (who was just 19 years old here) and Cobrinha submitted all of their opponents before this match. This match, one of the greatest nogi matches ever, went to double overtime. This one set the tone for years to come.

MATCH TWO: Cobrinha is one of the absolute best ever. At black belt, he’s only been submitted twice. One of those was by Rodolfo Vieira, a man who has 60 pounds of solid muscle on him. The other was here, in 2012.

If you watched that 2009 match, you saw Cobrinha’s defensive prowess on full display. Rafa threatened a number of submissions, but Cobrinha always had an answer. In the gi Pan Ams, though, Mendes executed an armbar perfectly and fought through Rubens Charles’ valiant and courageous defenses. No other person close to his weight has ever done so, before or since.

MATCH THREE: Before we complete our trilogy with Cobrinha, let’s go back to the 2009 ADCC, where Rafa fought the legendary Leozinho, Leo Vieira (another man worth studying hours of film on). Mendes’ relentless attacks keep coming, and his rise is on full display here.

MATCH FOUR: I had the pleasure of watching this one live, at the 2015 worlds. It really showed the growth of Rafa’s game. Cobrinha had beaten him at ADCC in 2013, and you could tell that the rivalry meant a lot to each man. I was on pins and needles for this one — but Rafa took charge from the beginning. pulling guard and implementing his game with seemingly little effort.

Well up on points, it looked like Rafa had Cobrinha caught again toward the end of the match. But after Cobrinha escaped, he kind of wagged his finger and looked at the crowd to say something like “not today.” There was a terse exchange of words between the two men. At a seminar years later, I asked Rafa about what they said to each other. I’m going to leave that right there for now. Maybe I’ll talk about it on the show sometime.

MATCH FIVE: Okay, you hate the double guard pull. I hate it too, honestly. But we can’t ignore the prominence of the dueling berimbolo game in the mid-2010s, and two masters of it put their skills on display at the 2014 European championship finals. I’m including this match with Paulo Miyao for that reason (it’s reflective of the time), because of the interesting Mendes-Miyao dynamic, and because it’s a rare example of this genre that features very little stalling. (Higher quality link here, but one that won’t let me embed).

MATCH SIX: Let’s close out with a match from 2016. Rafa is at the height of his powers, in the prime of his life at 26, and is just clearly a level above both his opponent in his weight class final at the Rickson Cup and his absolute final opponent, Ichitaro Tsukada. This isn’t anything against either of these men. It’s just a statement of where Rafa’s game is relative to even regular competitive black belts. You see his movement on full display here, against Yuto Hirao. He flows to the best option so effortlessly, it looks almost like he’s drilling. This isn’t a man with anything left to prove.

This isn’t a man with anything left to prove.