Tainan Dalpra

Four matches, four chokes from the back and about six minutes of mat time. That was Tainan Dalpra’s tally at the 2026 Worlds, his fourth middleweight title. The AOJ athlete from Florianópolis, Brazil, is in the best stretch of his career: since 2025 he has won every major gi tournament he has entered.

Tainan Dalpra Costa was born in Florianópolis, in southern Brazil, on November 6, 2000, and started Jiu-Jitsu at around age 5, brought in by his father, Deivid Soares. In 2014 he won Pan Kids in California and used the trip to visit Art of Jiu-Jitsu (AOJ). The next year, at 14, he moved to Costa Mesa as one of the first scholarship athletes in the Mendes brothers’ program.

He was a juvenile world champion in 2016 and 2017 and a blue belt world champion in 2018. At brown belt, in 2020, he won Europeans with nothing but submissions and did the same at Pans in October. He left that podium with his black belt, given by Guilherme Mendes, at age 19.

His four world titles as a black belt all came at middleweight, in 2021, 2022, 2025 and 2026. The first was an 8-6 win over Isaque Bahiense. He also has five Pans titles, four Europeans titles, three Brazilian Nationals titles and the middleweight title from the first edition of The Crown, in 2023. The IBJJF recognizes him as the first man to complete two Grand Slams, in 2023 and 2026, under the federation’s season-based count.

He has three losses as a black belt. The first was in 2021, to Mica Galvão, by decision, in a 77 kg (170 lb) tournament. The second was in the 2023 Worlds final, to Jansen Gomes, on advantages. The third was a disqualification in the quarterfinals of the 2024 Worlds. That same year he won two matches at The Crown and did not contest the final because of an injury.

In 2026 he won Europeans, Pans, the Brazilian Nationals and Worlds, just as he had in 2025. In Long Beach he took the back and choked Oilson Alvim, Pedro Leonardo, Matheus Luna and Natan Chueng, one after the other. None of them made it to the end of regulation time.