Berimbolo has been around for many years since the Mendes brothers popularized it from around 2008 or so.
It’s still often considered as an advanced, complicated, and modern move.
But don’t let that general perception fool you. You should learn at least how it works.
After all, someone will try berimbolo-ing you, and it sucks if you don’t know how to deal with it. Understanding how it works is usually the key to learning how to counter it.
And this applies to any technique/position in BJJ. So, that’s pretty much one of the most important reasons why you should learn anything in BJJ.
But let me give you a few more reasons why it might be great to learn berimbolo and start using it.
1. Berimbolo allows you to go around your opponent’s legs and give you direct access to their back.
And the back position is the most dominant position you can take in BJJ.
2. You can hit it from all sorts of positions.
You typically set up berimbolo from the de la riva guard, but that’s not the only place from which you can do berimbolo.
The reverse de la riva, the waiter guard, and the deep half guard would be other popular guards to combine with berimbolo.
You can do it from the top position, from a scramble, or as an escape from the saddle position, too.
Combined with #1, this means that you will have more back-taking opportunities.
3. There are good B plans in case your berimbolo-to-the-back doesn’t work. You can come up into the leg drag pass position, the mount position, or the smash pass position, for example. Or you could keep chasing the back by doing the “crab ride”.
In short, berimbolo is versatile as a move, and you can connect it with all sorts of techniques.
Unless you absolutely can’t do it because of your neck problem or something, consider learning how to do berimbolo.