Kiss of the Dragon is the Heads to the Berimbolo's Tails. Or maybe it's the other way around. Who knows . The Berimbolo is an inverting back take to the outside from De la Riva. The kiss of the Dragon is a inverting back take to the inside from reverse De la Riva. Both are on the advanced, highly sportified end of the Jiu Jitsu spectrum.
Before we look at the specifics of the technique, here is a solo drill you can try to help improve your ability to invert. Begin on your back with your legs in the air and your butt right up against a wall. Use your feet to climb up the wall elevating you hips. Step one foot over the other while at the same time spinning on your shoulders so your head moves toward the wall. Keep your feet on the wall and try not to push yourself too far away as you complete your rotation back to the starting position. If you struggle with this drill I would work out it for a while before attempting the following techniques live.
Our standard grips for RDLR are the inside leg acting as a hook, wrapping around our opponents thigh, our outside leg acting as a post pushing on their hip, and our inside hand (right) gripping the ankle of the near leg. Our outside hand (left) can be in a number of different places and kind of plays both roles, sometimes posting, sometimes pulling. In order to begin the Kiss of the Dragon Our left hand will reach for a far side grip. This can be the lapel, the arm, or the leg if it is withing reach. Once We have a grip and are confident we can make our move, we will switch our right hand from holding the inside of our opponents ankle to instead push against the outside of the ankle with the back of the hand. Next, we will begin the inversion. As we do, our left hand plays defense posting to deflect any threats. It may need to hand fight for a moment to do so, but the primary target is the back of the far knee. We need to be able to frame against our opponents weight should they decide to drop it on us while we're inverted. As soon as possible, we want to replace the left hand with the left shin and move the left hand down to the left foot. Here we should be more or less stacked on our shoulders, looking up at our opponents back with a grip on both of their feet, our left shin in the back of one knee and our right hamstring in the back of the other. As quickly as possible we want to abandon one of the feet grips to get a belt or skirt grip, swing the right foot inside, pull and kick. This will drop them nicely into our lap and flair their arms. Grab the collar right away while it's open and worry about the hooks later. Here is the move from the front and back.
A common variation of reverse De la Riva is reverse De la Spider. Almost the same, we swap out our hip post for a foot on bicep spider guard grip. This can be helpful to regain space. In the example below, Dan is crashing in hard and using his elbow to fence the post off the hip. He also has a strong collar grip. If he can clear the inside grip on his right foot he will be ready to knee cut.
First we need to reestablish a post and break the collar grip. We work the outside knee in between the hip and elbow then bridge up into it to break the collar grip. From here the foot goes in the bicep to gain even more distance. We could simple reset from here, but instead we will again invert for the back take it what would now be Kiss of the Spider. We use the spider post as well as the RDLR hook to move them a far forward as possible. This frequently will make them take a much larger step then before. After this all the steps are the same as above. Note that in the examples below I do not switch the original ankle grip, this is because I am holding the cuff instead of the actual ankle and feel as though I can get the angles I need with one less move. Both versions are possible.
