Magra

Monique Elias competed in 11 editions of Worlds, from white belt to black, and counts 2016 as the year that mattered most. Writing in 2026, when the event turned 30, she said that was when she wrote her name into Jiu-Jitsu history. At those Worlds, the Alliance athlete from Porto Alegre won the black belt middleweight division, with Luiza Monteiro, the previous year’s champion, in second.

Born in 1990 in Porto Alegre, she modeled from an early age and swapped the runway for Jiu-Jitsu, which she started at 19 under Mario Reis, who gave her every belt. Her nickname, Magra (skinny), comes from how she looked when she first stepped on the mat. She recalls that at the start people said she would not last a month. She won Worlds at every belt: white in 2010, blue in 2012, purple in 2013 and brown in 2014, the last three with gold in both her weight class and the open class. In June 2014, right after the brown belt open class final, Mario Reis gave her a black belt on the podium, the first he had awarded to a woman.

At her first Worlds as a black belt, in 2015, she took bronze in her division and silver in the open class while competing, in her words, with a broken foot and all of its ligaments torn. That year she also won Pans, the Abu Dhabi World Pro and the Brazilian Nationals, the last with double gold. After the 2016 title she won the 2017 Pans and took silver at Worlds in 2017, losing the final to Ana Carolina Vieira, and in 2018 at medium-heavyweight, behind Claudia do Val. The 2018 Worlds were her last. She holds a law degree.