Andy Murasaki

Andy Tomas Murasaki Pereira was born on March 26, 2000, in Saitama Prefecture, Japan, near Tokyo, to Brazilian parents of Japanese descent. BJJ Heroes records that he moved to Brazil as a baby and spent meaningful parts of his childhood there before returning to train mainly in Japan. His father, Anderson Murasaki, introduced him to jiu-jitsu at age eight, coached him through his early development, and promoted him up to blue belt. Andy also trained with Toshio Asada and Yoski Suto while building the foundation that made him one of the standout juvenile competitors of his generation.

By his mid-teens Murasaki had decided to chase a full-time jiu-jitsu career outside Japan. He moved to the United States as a teenager, initially joining Caio Terra's program and receiving his purple belt from Terra in late 2017. In 2018 he switched to Atos in San Diego, where Andre and Angelica Galvao became his primary black-belt coaches. The move sharpened an already technical game and set up a dominant colored-belt run: European gold at purple in 2018, Pan gold at purple in 2019, and then brown-belt double gold at the 2020 IBJJF Pan Championship after winning the 2020 European Championship earlier that season.

Andre Galvao promoted Murasaki to black belt on December 21, 2020. His senior breakthrough came quickly in the gi and no-gi ranks: he won the EUG featherweight tournament in 2021, took silver at the 2022 IBJJF Pan Championship and World Championship, and captured the 2022 IBJJF World No-Gi Championship at middleweight. He followed with 2023 European Championship gold, then kept reaching the hardest finals in the sport, earning IBJJF World silver medals in 2023, 2024, and 2025 while moving between lightweight, middleweight, and medium-heavyweight fields.

The 2024 IBJJF The Crown gave Murasaki one of his clearest black-belt signature titles. IBJJF's recap noted that he beat Jaime Canuto 7-0 and submitted Mauricio Oliveira by armbar before winning the middleweight final by walkover when Tainan Dalpra could not continue. FloGrappling's profile also tracks that Crown run alongside a 12-4 season in 2024 and a 14-3 season in 2025. In 2025 he added Asian Championship weight-and-absolute gold, and BJJ Metrics lists his 2026 Brazilian Nationals light-division title under AOJ, matching BJJ Heroes' report that he left Atos and joined Art of Jiu-Jitsu in early 2026.

Murasaki is known less for a single trademark than for a complete, submission-positive gi game. BJJ Heroes lists his favorite position as well-rounded, while its record data shows heavy finishing numbers by back choke, armbar, kata gatame, arm-in Ezekiel, triangle, bow-and-arrow, and leg attacks. That breadth fits his career arc: a Brazilian-born, Japan-raised trilingual competitor who left home young, grew through Caio Terra and Atos, and has remained a fixture in elite IBJJF finals while entering his AOJ chapter.