Tye Ruotolo

Tye Ruotolo left Long Beach in 2022 with a silver medal and became world champion ten months later, away from the mats. At his first Worlds as a black belt he beat Levi Jones-Leary 8-0 in the lightweight quarterfinals and Lucas Valente 4-0 in the semifinal before losing the final 2-0 to Mica Galvão. In April 2023, USADA announced Mica’s sanction for clomiphene found in a sample taken at that tournament, and his results from June 5, 2022 onward were disqualified. The IBJJF updated the podium, and the lightweight title passed to Tye.

He was born on January 22, 2003, in Maui, Hawaii, the twin brother of Kade Ruotolo. He competed for the first time at 3, in 2006, at Cleber Luciano’s academy in California. He spent about four years at Art of Jiu-Jitsu with Rafael and Guilherme Mendes and arrived at Atos headquarters in San Diego in 2017. André Galvão promoted him from green belt onward and gave him his black belt on December 14, 2021, at 18, months after he won Worlds at brown belt. Before that he had already been juvenile world champion, in 2019.

A top pressure game he calls scramble-jitsu put the twins at the centre of no-gi grappling while they were still teenagers. At ADCC 2022, Tye lost his first match at 88 kg to Josh Hinger and reached the semifinal of the absolute, where Nicholas Meregali beat him. At the 2023 Worlds, now at middleweight, he took bronze after losing the semifinal 4-0 to Jansen Gomes.

From there, ONE Championship became his main home. On November 3, 2023, he beat Magomed Abdulkadirov on a decision to win the promotion’s first welterweight submission grappling title. He defended it against Izaak Michell, submitted with an arm-in rear naked choke, against Dante Leon in 2025 and against Pawel Jaworski in March 2026.

In September 2025 he made his MMA debut with a rear naked choke on Adrian Lee in the second round. In November, in Tokyo, he did it again to Shozo Isojima, this time in the first round. At 2-0, he is booked to face Christian Lee for the ONE lightweight MMA title on November 6, 2026, in Bangkok.