Andre Galvao has just revealed that he is ‘seriously considering’ making a return to Jiu-Jitsu competition. He is far from the first legendary competitor to toy with the idea of coming out of retirement, but not all of them do take that leap. Marcelo Garcia famously returned to competition just a few months ago after over a decade out of action, and there was more than one occasion that Roger Gracie stepped back onto the mats after years away from it. For every historic moment like those, there’s plenty of missed opportunities like the brief period of time that Georges St-Pierre almost made a grappling comeback.
Galvao is one of the most likely legends to follow through with the idea though, as he’s always training hard with the elite competitors at ATOS Headquarters. Not only does Galvao stay incredibly active in training, but it hasn’t been that long since he was competing at the highest level of the sport. He was the longest-reigning ADCC Superfight champion as recently as 2022 and beat back some of the best grapplers in the world throughout his time as the promotion’s king. He won that title back in 2013 and spent almost a decade defending it, right up until he lost it to Gordon Ryan at ADCC 2022.
Galvao steadily competed less and less often during that title-reign, up to the point that he only had one match against Reinier de Ridder between the ADCC world championships in 2019 and 2022. There were plenty of doubts that he would actually return for his match with Gordon Ryan at the time, and he decided to step away from competition immediately after it. Although Galvao hasn’t competed since then, he did reveal that he was willing to step in if someone dropped out of the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational. Now he’s considering a planned return at the age of 42 and after 3 years of inactivity, and the timing couldn’t be better with CJI 2 just a matter of months away.
Andre Galvao revealed that he was considering making a return to competition in a recent story posted to his official Instagram account:
