Elisabeth Clay

Elisabeth Ann Clay was born on June 10, 2000, in Katy, Texas. She moved to Oklahoma at age 8 and later to Soldotna, Alaska. She did gymnastics from the time she was a baby and competed until about age 12, when she joined a local MMA gym and found she preferred grappling. She trained for four years with Mason Ryder Spadafore.

At 16 she moved to Legacy Jiu-Jitsu, Jordan Kontra’s academy in Anchorage, an Ares affiliate. In 2017, still a blue belt, she won the ADCC North American Trials. In 2018 she moved to Ares headquarters in Modesto, California, to train with Osvaldo “Queixinho” Moizinho and Samir Chantre, and returned to Alaska the following year. She got her black belt from both in November 2020.

She built her black belt career on leg attacks, gi and no-gi. In no-gi she was world champion in 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2025 and won the Polaris Grand Prix in 2023. In the gi she won the 2023 Pans at middleweight.

In August 2024 she had her first child. She returned to competition 76 days later, at No-Gi Pans, and won her weight class and the open class; in December she won No-Gi Worlds.

In 2025 she won the Brazilian Nationals, took silver at Worlds, losing to Thalyta Silva by one advantage in the middleweight final, and bronze in the open class. At The Crown she dropped to lightweight and lost in the quarterfinals to Bianca Basílio, 7-4. In December she won her weight class and the open class at No-Gi Worlds, submitting Gabrieli Pessanha in the open class final.

In 2026, competing for Six Blades Jiu-Jitsu, she had three middleweight finals against Lillian Marchand: she lost at Pans and Worlds, both by armbar, and won at the Brazilian Nationals with a kneebar. In June she won her weight class and the open class at the No-Gi Brazilian Nationals.

She returns to the Crown lightweight bracket on November 8.