Janni Larsson

Janni Larsson won the 2014 Worlds with an injured arm taped up and barely believing it herself. In the middleweight final, the Swedish CheckMat athlete drew with Vanessa Oliveira of GF Team and won 2-0 on advantages after threatening a sweep and a foot lock. Earlier she opened with a foot lock and got past Sophia Drysdale with three sweeps. “Disbelief. I did not think that I had it in me to win that fight,” she said after the final. In the open class she beat Vanessa again and lost to Bia Mesquita by armbar.

Born on August 19, 1987, in Kristinehamn, Sweden, she moved to Jönköping at 14 and started ju-jutsu at the JJK Samurai club around 2005. The club added Jiu-Jitsu in 2007. Marcelo Yogui gave her the blue and purple belts, and in 2010 she moved to Copenhagen to study medicine and train at CheckMat’s Arte Suave under Shimon Mochizuki. Between 2012 and 2013 she spent months in Santos, Brazil, training with Cavaca and Michelle Nicolini.

She won Worlds at purple belt in 2012 and brown belt in 2013, with gold in her division and the open class both years, and received her black belt from Mochizuki on August 17, 2013. At the new rank she took silver at the 2014 Europeans and, in the same year as her world title, won the Abu Dhabi World Pro at 72 kg, beating Monique Elias, Fernanda Mazzelli and Polyana Lago, and took open class silver behind Gabi Garcia. Sweden’s martial arts federation named her its role model of the year for 2014.

In 2015 she won the Europeans at middleweight and, in April, after the World Pro, announced she was stepping away from top-level competition. “I will always train jiujitsu, but I am done competing at the top level,” she wrote.