Pawel Jaworski’s Pan No-Gi 2026 Double Gold: A Heel Hook-Heavy Run Toward the Grand Slam

Pawel Jaworski doesn’t have an off-season. Three weeks after becoming the first Polish athlete to win an ADCC World Championship title, the Academia Gorila standout showed up in Secaucus, New Jersey and did it again — this time with a leg lock clinic that ran through six different opponents and ended in double gold at the 2026 IBJJF Pan No-Gi Championship.

Jaworski won his weight class (medium-heavyweight, 85kg) and the absolute division at the October 2-4 event, held at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in front of more than 2,300 registered athletes. Four of his six wins across both brackets came by heel hook — two from the outside, two from the inside — which tells you most of what you need to know about how he’s spent 2026.

The Medium-Heavyweight Run

Jaworski’s weight-class bracket was the shorter of the two gauntlets, but it still took him through a European No-Gi medalist and a Brasileiro No-Gi champion on the way to gold:

• Quarterfinal: defeated Luan Veras, 6-6 on points, won on a 1-0 advantage
• Semifinal: defeated Natan Chueng via outside heel hook
• Final: defeated David Garmo via triangle choke

The Chueng semifinal is the one worth pausing on. Chueng is a former Pan No-Gi champion himself and a reigning Gi Worlds silver medalist — not someone who gets caught in a leg entanglement by accident. Jaworski finished him with an outside heel hook, then went on to close out the final against Garmo with a triangle instead of another leg attack, a reminder that the guard passing and top pressure he’s been adding to his game all year (first flagged publicly back at the Venice Jesolo Open in July) is now showing up when it matters.

Absolute Gold: Three More Matches, Three More Leg Attacks

If the weight class run showed range, the open class run was pure specialization. Jaworski went back to the leg lock well in every single match on his way to absolute gold:

• Quarterfinal: defeated Sean Goolsby via inside heel hook
• Semifinal: defeated Luuk Aaron via outside heel hook
• Final: defeated Wallisson Oliveira by referee decision, in a match both competitors spent exchanging reversals and sweeps while Jaworski kept hunting footlocks from the bottom

Goolsby’s name is worth flagging for context: he also made the final of the ultra-heavyweight bracket at this same tournament, where he lost to Alexandre Manara — also via inside heel hook. Lower-limb finishes were the story of this Pan No-Gi across multiple weight classes, not just Jaworski’s bracket, and it’s a trend that should worry anyone still training no-gi without a real leg lock defense framework.

What’s Left for the Grand Slam

Jaworski is already the IBJJF’s #1-ranked male no-gi athlete, and this result keeps alive a bigger storyline: the No-Gi Grand Slam, awarded for sweeping the Pan, European, Brasileiro, and World No-Gi titles in the same calendar year. He banked the Brasileiro No-Gi title back in June in Rio de Janeiro, and now adds Pan No-Gi from Secaucus. The European No-Gi Championship and the World No-Gi Championship — the latter set for December 10-12 in Las Vegas — are the pieces still on the board.

It’s a demanding ask even for someone running this hot. Between ADCC Krakow, the Brasileiro, and now the Pans, Jaworski has been on a plane and on a mat almost continuously since the summer. Whether that pace holds through December is the real question hanging over the rest of his year.

The Bigger Picture at No-Gi Pans

Jaworski’s run was the headline, but the broader tournament leaned the same direction. Between his four heel hook finishes and Manara’s inside heel hook win over Goolsby in the ultra-heavy final, straight ankle locks, kneebars, and toeholds showing up throughout the brackets, the 2026 Pan No-Gi reinforced something the no-gi scene has been saying for a while: guard retention without a leg lock plan is a liability at the black belt level now, not just at the ADCC level.

For Jaworski, double gold at the Pans is two majors down in 2026, with Europeans and Worlds still to come. Four heel hooks in six matches isn’t a hot streak at this point — it’s just how he’s beating people.