Meyran Alves claims King of Mats title on Day 2 of Abu Dhabi Grand Slam finale

Meyran Alves came through undefeated to clinch the King of Mats title on Day 2 of the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam World Tour finals at the Jiu-Jitsu Arena at Zayed Sports City on Saturday.

The Brazilian, competing under the Al Wahda Club banner, was completing a double for his country after compatriot Yara Nascimento was crowned the Queen of Mats.

Alves, 21, edged out American Isaac Doederlein in the final 2-1 on points for the lightweight title.

“It was a very hard bracket with the best in the weight category and I’m glad I came through all the fights in my first time in this prestigious competition,” Alves told The National.

“I had to go through four fights without any break in-between. It was the same format for everyone but that makes it very tough in combat sports. Nevertheless, I’m super happy for the night’s work.”

Doederlein also reached the final without dropping a game but couldn’t match Alves on the night.

“I watched Isaac’s fights and knew his strong points when he reached the final. It was a very close final and I just managed to get the better of him,” Alves said.

Wahda coach Gabriel Figueiro was instrumental in getting both Alves and Nascimento to compete under the Abu Dhabi club.

“I coached Meyran back in Brazil and got them down for the King and Queen of Mats,” said Figueiro, who took charge of Wahda’s jiu-jitsu team two months ago.

Omar Al Fadhli failed to progress on his debut at the King of Mats, narrowly going down to Brazilian Lucas Pinheiro 1-0 in the opening fight and losing to Doederlein by submission after taking a 2-0 lead in the next.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian men once again dominated the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Masters 1 black belt division, winning six of the seven golds on offer.

Igor Silva retained his 120-kilogram super heavyweight title defeating Felipe Bezzera on points 12-6.

A former world champion and a long time competitor in Abu Dhabi, Silva, 38, has lost count of the medals he has won in the UAE.

“Abu Dhabi is one of the best venues for jiu-jitsu and I have enjoyed the competition, the facilities as well as the hospitality provided for the athletes here,” Silva said.

“I have met Felipe a few times and also in last year’s final. He’s a very tough opponent to overcome. I had to bid my time to catch him off-guard tonight, and it came in the final 30 seconds of the fight. Obviously I’m very happy to return with another gold from Abu Dhabi.”

The only gold that slipped from the clutches of the Brazilians was in the 77kg welterweight final where Osvaldo Moizinho rallied in the final seconds to get the better of another former world champion Adriano Araujo by points 3-2.

“I’m a Brazilian now representing the United States of America, but it’s good to win a gold for my adopted country,” Moizinho said. “I moved to the USA 12 years ago and received my citizenship recently. However, I learnt my jiu-jitsu from where I was born.”

Moizinho, 35, first took part in the Abu Dhabi World Professional Jiu-Jitsu Championship in 2014 and won a bronze in the same event last year.

“I’m happy to take with e a gold this time,” he added. “Adriano is a big name in the jiu-jitsu circuit and it was my first meeting ever against him.

“He was leading by two points and with time running out, I gave it all in the final seconds of that fight to close the gap to a point before scoring off a sweep to win.

Thiago Marques made a remarkable come-back to clinch the 69kg title from Rafael Mansur in another all-Brazilian final.

Mansur was leading 2-1 on points when Marques turned it around with a foot-lock to force a submission with just seconds left for the bell.

Sri Lanka's T20I squad

Thisara Perera (captain), Dilshan Munaweera, Danushka Gunathilaka, Sadeera Samarawickrama, Ashan Priyanjan, Mahela Udawatte, Dasun Shanaka, Sachith Pathirana, Vikum Sanjaya, Lahiru Gamage, Seekkuge Prasanna, Vishwa Fernando, Isuru Udana, Jeffrey Vandersay and Chathuranga de Silva.

Key facilities

Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
Premier League-standard football pitch
400m Olympic running track
NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
600-seat auditorium
Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
Specialist robotics and science laboratories
AR and VR-enabled learning centres
Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills

Red flags

Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.

Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching

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Know your cyber adversaries

Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.

Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.

Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.

Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.

Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.

Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.

Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.

Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.

Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.

Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.

Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.

Pharaoh's curse

British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, who funded the expedition to find the Tutankhamun tomb, died in a Cairo hotel four months after the crypt was opened.
He had been in poor health for many years after a car crash, and a mosquito bite made worse by a shaving cut led to blood poisoning and pneumonia.
Reports at the time said Lord Carnarvon suffered from “pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes”.
Decades later, scientists contended he had died of aspergillosis after inhaling spores of the fungus aspergillus in the tomb, which can lie dormant for months. The fact several others who entered were also found dead withiin a short time led to the myth of the curse.

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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.