MARCELOTINE (HIGH-ELBOW GUILLOTINE)

The Marcelotine is the variation of the guillotine choke developed and popularized by Marcelo Garcia in the mid-2000s. The technique uses a closed grip with the choking hand cupping the opposite shoulder rather than the wrist-pull that conventional guillotines use, and finishes by squeezing the elbows together while sitting the hips forward. The Marcelotine works particularly well as a blood choke from closed guard and from the front-headlock position during scrambles.

The mechanics begin with the standard guillotine setup — head trapped under the armpit, wrist of the choking arm crossing the throat — but instead of pulling the wrist toward the body with the free hand, the attacker grips the choking hand on the opposite shoulder, palm down. From this configuration the finish comes from squeezing the elbows together while thrusting the hips forward, which compresses both carotids and produces a fast blood choke. The elbow squeeze provides the structural lever that conventional guillotines use the wrist-pull for.

Marcelo Garcia used the Marcelotine extensively in his ADCC career, finishing multiple top heavyweights with the technique during scrambles where conventional guillotines would have been defended. The closed-grip configuration makes the technique harder to strip than the conventional version because the gripping hand is not exposed to the defender's hand-fight. Defensively the Marcelotine is escaped by walking to the same side as the choking arm to relieve carotid pressure, by sliding one arm under the attacker\'s far leg to pass while the grip breaks, or by hand-fighting the closed grip at the shoulder before it consolidates.