Kalyl Silva is one of MMA legend Anderson Silva’s sons and he’s following in his father’s footsteps, recently competing in his first BJJ tournament as a white belt. Although Silva became a UFC world champion with one of the greatest title-reigns of all time, his combat sports career had similar humble beginnings. He started out with Jiu-Jitsu as a child and eventually added striking martial arts in when he was a teenager, before making his professional MMA debut at the age of 22. He also had a handful of boxing and Muay Thai fights as well, but MMA has always been his primary focus.
That’s where Anderson and Kalyl Silva differ, because the son hasn’t spent as much time doing BJJ as his father. They have trained together in the past but until now, Kalyl has focused exclusively on striking as far as his combat sports career goes. He has had a handful of amateur kickboxing matches and currently holds an impressive 3-0 professional boxing record, with his last fight coming on the same card as his father’s boxing match against Chael Sonnen. At just 26 years old, there’s still plenty of time for Kalyl to move in to MMA as well and this might be why he’s working on his grappling.
He’s still fairly new to Jiu-Jitsu though and his first competitive outing came at a local tournament called the Super Cup 2025 in Downey, California. Silva competed in the white belt middleweight division and came up against the eventual winner in the first round, losing 3-0 on points. He was given the chance for redemption in the repechage bracket though, and he won his next match 3-0 on points. That booked him a place in the bronze-medal match but he was submitted with an Ezekiel choke and had to settle for fourth-place instead. Going 1-2 in your first tournament is a decent showing for anyone and it’ll be interesting to see how far he can go if Kalyl chooses to continue down this path.
Kalyl Silva shared the footage of his first BJJ tournament in a recent video uploaded to his official YouTube channel:
