Guilherme Mendes

Guilherme Mendes Godoy, better known as Gui Mendes, was born in 1988 in Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brazil. He began jiu-jitsu in 2001 alongside his younger brother Rafael after their cousin Thiago Mendes, then a purple belt under Leonardo Santos, recognized the brothers’ potential and brought them to train under Santos and Ramon Lemos. When Santos later moved to Rio de Janeiro, Lemos became the central coach in Gui’s development, guiding the brothers through the colored belts and eventually into Atos Jiu-Jitsu.

Gui’s rise through the colored-belt ranks was unusually complete: he won IBJJF World titles at blue, purple, and brown belt and Brazilian Nationals titles across the same development years. Lemos promoted him to black belt in October 2008. Less than a year later, Mendes became the first Atos athlete to win an IBJJF black-belt World Championship, taking the 2009 light-featherweight title by defeating Samuel Braga in the final. That result made him one of the defining technicians of the early Atos era and established the Mendes brothers as central figures in the modern lightweight game.

At black belt, Mendes won four IBJJF World Championship gold medals in the 64 kg division (2009, 2011, 2012, and 2014), plus the 2013 Pan Championship, the 2010 and 2011 European Opens, and the 2010 Brazilian Nationals. His style was built around precision guard work, distance management, stack passing, leg drags, and shoulder-pressure passing, with the brothers’ berimbolo and back-taking systems becoming part of the technical language of modern gi jiu-jitsu. BJJ Heroes records his professional grappling ledger at 42 wins, including 22 submissions, against 8 losses.

In July 2012, Gui and Rafael moved their long-term project to Costa Mesa, California, opening Art of Jiu-Jitsu with support from RVCA founder PM Tenore. Gui retired from professional competition on May 19, 2015, at age 26, while still the reigning world champion in his division, choosing to focus on family, teaching, and building the AOJ team. AOJ later became independent from Atos and developed one of the sport’s strongest youth-to-black-belt pipelines, including world champions such as Tainan Dalpra, Jessa Khan, Johnatha Alves, Cole Abate, and other athletes regularly featured in FloGrappling’s AOJ coverage.

Mendes was inducted into the IBJJF Hall of Fame in 2022 after meeting the four-world-title benchmark. His legacy is split between athlete and coach: as a competitor he helped define light-featherweight jiu-jitsu in the late 2000s and early 2010s; as a coach he helped turn AOJ into a highly structured academy model built around long-term athlete development, drilling culture, and precise match strategy.