Diego “Pato” Oliveira

Diego Oliveira won his fifth world title, untied his black belt and left it on the mat. That was how, in Long Beach, the Brazilian known as Pato said goodbye to gi competition, on the same day he became the winningest light-featherweight in history.

The nickname, which means “duck” in Portuguese, came from his first training partners in Manaus, because of the size of his feet. Diego Oliveira Batista was born on October 2, 1998, in Parintins, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, and moved to the state capital at age 10 with his father. He found Jiu-Jitsu in 2012, at 13, in a social project run by Arley Silva. He then trained under Nabil Abdel Aziz, who gave him his blue belt.

As a teenager he moved to São Paulo to train with Cícero Costha. On the coach’s team he won Worlds at purple belt in 2017 and at brown belt in 2019, a year in which he also won Europeans, Pans and the Brazilian Nationals. It was Cícero who gave him his black belt, in June 2019, when Pato was 20.

His five world titles all came at light-featherweight, in 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Robson Moura and Guilherme Mendes, his coach at AOJ, stopped at four. The list goes beyond Worlds. In 2024 he took the featherweight title at The Crown and silver at ADCC. In 2025 he won all four Grand Slam tournaments, with Europeans and Pans at featherweight and the Brazilian Nationals and Worlds at light-featherweight.

Since February 2023 he has trained at Art of Jiu-Jitsu (AOJ) in California. Before that he was with Cícero Costha’s team and, from January 2022, with Dream Art. At AOJ he shares the mat with Cole Abate, with whom he closed out the 2025 Pans final, and with Tainan Dalpra and Mayssa Bastos.

The farewell applies to the gi. His last tournament was the 2026 Worlds, where he submitted his first three opponents and beat Khaled Alshehi 9-0 in the final. Earlier that year he had won Europeans and Pans and taken silver at the Brazilian Nationals. In no-gi he is still active: in September he competed at ADCC in Poland in the 66 kg (145 lb) division, won two matches, lost the semifinal to Kennedy Maciel by referee decision and took bronze.