Leandro Lo vs Felipe Preguica @ Rio Open

Leandro Lo struggles with his guard passing here, in the open division. Preguice makes it nearly 4 1/2 minutes before Lo passes and nearly gets to mount, perhaps briefly, it's hard to tell by the angle.
It's interesting to see Lo struggle with perhaps a longer limbed, heavier opponent, and not to discredit anything about his game, as he's at the forefront of cutting edge competition at the moment, but perhaps like the Mendes brothers, he is limited by his skillset with guys of comparable size/frame in his division.
At 8:50 Lo gets to the back briefly from standing position to knee through pass as Preguica adjusts grip but in the restart against must address the guard.

You can tell in scrambles Lo would normally reassert pressure and break the opponent down, here, with Preguica, his fatigue and the size difference halts his gains in momentum.

Part of what always set apart Marcelo Garcia and Royler was their work against heavier opponents and it will be interesting if another star rises in the next few years from the lighter weight classes to bring back the old adage/belief in the small man beating the big man.

Leandro Lo vs Jacob Mackenzie: From 2012-2013

Below I've linked 2 Leandro Lo matches against the same opponent: Jacob Mackenzie.

The matches begin similarly with Mackenzie shooting a low single, but in 2012 Mackenzie immediately goes to a deep half position whereas in 2013, he works more diligently for the low single but is ultimately reversed by Leandro Lo with a sacrifice throw/sumi gaeshi type turnover b/c Mackenzie stops driving with the single leg and goes static for a bit, allowing Leandro to react and adjust.

The 2013 match is vintage Lo with his knee through, active posting with the left hand, punching the right hand through to underhook as he knee through passes or cross facing Mackenzie's face away with the back of his right forearm and virtually stuffing all manner of Mackenzie's attempts to spin underneath and sweep from deep half. In 2013, Mackenzie briefly gets to one legged x-guard which Lo steps over, and briefly has spots in deep half but the show is by and large Leandro Lo. 

In the 2012 Match, Leandro very quickly punches his right hand through to the underhook then Gable grips to force the knee through pass on Mackenzie by the 1:15 mark. Mackenzie gets back to half-guard and Leandro Lo must restart with his knee through and gets back to active posting with the left hand, right hand in the cross collar and working his knee through pass again. It's not until the 3 minute mark that Lo passes Mackenzie's half-guard/deep half switching back and forth.
At 6:21 Mackenzie almost takes Lo's back in identical fashion to the way he does from deep half in the 2013 match, but Lo ultimately scrambles to make enough space to come up to knee through the middle pass as usual.
Mackenzie does a far better job than most of the guys I've seen face Lo (Clark Gracie comes to mind, as does Sean Roberts - granted, a newly minted black belt, but the list of guys Lo just quickly passes their guard is very long indeed).



First up - Leandro Lo vs Jacob Mackenzie from the CBJJE Pan Ams in 2012


Second up - LEandro Lo vs Jacob Mackenzie from the CBJJE Mundials in 2013