A great way to study for grappling is find athletes within your weight class or with a similar game to you at the top of the sport and try to replicate and implement parts of their game in yours.
77kg is stacked right now, so there's no shortage of styles to pick from. If you compete or train No Gi at 77kg (or close to it) here's a good list of athletes for you to watch to improve your grappling game.
Mateusz Szczecinski
Szczecinski is a leg lock specialist at a world-class level, and his entries are what make him worth studying. He was huge part in the popularisation of the shotgun-style Aoki locks/ankle locks from butterfly ashi as well as his K Guard armbars.
What stands out is how deliberate the whole system is — the guard isn't there to stall or retain position, it's there to get to one specific leg entanglement he's already elite at finishing. If you want a leg lock game built around a real guard instead of scrambling into entries, this is the blueprint.
Micah Galvao
Galvao is the definition of an all-rounder. No glaring weakness to hunt for, which is exactly why he's worth studying — he's exceptional more or less everywhere the match goes, and he closes matches out with sharp guillotines and armbars.
Watch how he doesn't force a single gameplan. He reads what the opponent gives him and finishes with whatever's available, rather than hunting one signature position over and over.
PJ Barch
Barch's base is great wrestling and it shows in how well-rounded the rest of his game is built on top of it. He's not a one-position competitor — the takedown skill just gives him the platform to be dangerous everywhere else.
If your grappling is missing a strong standing game, Barch is a good athlete to study for how a wrestling and judo foundation supports everything downstream, from top control to scrambles.
Kade Ruotolo
Ruotolo is explosive and plays at an exceptionally high pace, which is rare to sustain at the top level without gassing out or getting sloppy. His passing is dynamic — constantly moving, never settling into one static pass — and it's backed by strong takedowns that let him dictate where the match happens.
Study how the pace itself is a weapon. He doesn't just pass quickly, he passes in a way that never gives the opponent a moment to reset by chaining pass attempts together to overwhelm the guard player. All his matches at CJI 1 are prime examples of this.
Dante Leon
Leon is another all-rounder on this list, great everywhere with exceptional wrestling underneath it. Like Galvao, there's no obvious hole to attack, which makes him a good athlete to study if you want a complete, low-weakness game rather than one big strength.
His Leglocks are exceptional too making him a great player to study for the modern jiu jitsu game
Andrew Tackett
Tackett rounds out the list with the same explosive, high-pace style as Ruotolo, paired with exceptional outside passing and great wrestling. His outside passing specifically is worth isolating — using angles and pressure to get around the legs rather than forcing through them.
If you're most comfortable playing a fast, pressure-forward top game, Tackett is the athlete here to study for how to combine pace with technical passing instead of just relying on athleticism. His matches with Eoghan O Flanagan and Nicky Ryan proved his effectiveness against world class guards.
How to Actually Use This List
Same advice as always: pick one athlete whose game actually resonates with you, then pick one specific thing they do — Szczecinski's K guard entries, Ruotolo's dynamic passing pace, Tackett's outside passing — and focus on that. Trying to copy six games at once gets you nowhere.
A good way to do this is via our explore feature in grapplex, which lets you refine your search to specific clips where the athlete performs the move or is in the position you're working on, instead of getting lost in endless clips on youtube or watching a full match just to find a 10 second sequence.