Tainan Dalpra

Tainan Dalpra Costa is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt under Guilherme Mendes and one of the defining gi competitors of the 2020s. Born on November 6, 2000, in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, he began training at age five under his father. As a teenager he stood out on the IBJJF kids and juvenile circuit; at about 13–14 he connected with Rafael and Guilherme Mendes of the Art of Jiu-Jitsu Academy (AOJ) and, in 2015, moved to Costa Mesa, California, to join AOJ’s competition team and Believe & Achieve scholarship program.

As a colored belt Dalpra collected major titles at nearly every rank. He won juvenile Worlds and Pans, then as an adult blue belt took the 2018 IBJJF World Championship (promoted to purple on the Worlds podium) and double-gold style runs at other majors. Purple- and brown-belt campaigns included European and Pan titles, Abu Dhabi World Pro and Grand Slam gold, and a brown-belt Pan championship that led Guilherme Mendes to promote him to black belt on the Pan podium in October 2020—still only 19 years old.

At black belt he immediately set a historic middleweight standard. In 2021 he won the IBJJF World Championship, Pan Championship, and AJP Grand Slam Miami, plus the IBJJF Middleweight Grand Prix, and was named Jitsmagazine Male Grappler of the Year (gi). He repeated as World champion in 2022 while also claiming European and Pan gold, again earning Gi Grappler of the Year honors. Through early 2023 he remained undefeated in IBJJF black-belt competition, winning Europeans, Pans, and Brasileiro before taking silver at the 2023 Worlds (his first IBJJF black-belt loss, to Jansen Gomes on advantages in a 0–0 final). He also won IBJJF The Crown middleweight in 2023 and began appearing in no-gi superfights (WNO debut armbar over Troy Russell, later wins over Oliver Taza, Jacob Rodriguez, and others).

After a 2024 Worlds quarterfinal disqualification and a The Crown silver cut short by injury, Dalpra returned to full major-title form in 2025: European, Pan, Brasileiro, and World gold at middleweight—completing the IBJJF grand-slam style year. In 2026 he extended the run with European, Pan, and a fourth IBJJF World title, highlighted by an all-submission Worlds campaign in which he conceded no points or advantages and finished every match by submission in roughly six minutes of total mat time—widely described as one of the most dominant Worlds performances in modern IBJJF history.

Technically Dalpra embodies the Mendes/AOJ system at the highest level: headquarters-based chain passing, a signature knee-slide (knee cut), long step and leg-weave transitions, relentless back-takes, and a high submission rate from mount and the back (collar chokes, armbars, and toeholds among frequent finishes). Based at AOJ in Southern California, he continues to represent the Mendes brothers’ academy as its flagship adult middleweight and remains a perennial #1-ranked threat in the IBJJF gi middleweight division.