MMA veteran Bibiano Fernandes will now be returning to BJJ competition at the IBJJF Pan Championship 2024, as he has entered the featherweight Master 3 black belt division of the tournament. It’s a return to the first combat sport he ever found, as Fernandes was a BJJ competitor for the longest time and has actually won three IBJJF World Championship gold medals and a silver medal over the course of his career. There’s going to be plenty of competition waiting for him as well, with over 20 other competitors entering his division and one of them being a fellow MMA legend; Daisuke Nakamura.
Fernandes hasn’t actually stepped on to the mats in IBJJF competition since 2007, which was long before his MMA career actually kicked off. He went 3-2 in his first 5 professional MMA fights and although he experienced mixed results, he was facing some incredible competition like a young Urijah Faber. That was when he signed a contract with DREAM and his career really started to pick up speed, as he beat legendary fighters like Joe Warren and Masakazu Imanari to win the promotion’s featherweight grand prix and the associated title.
Although he later lost that title, he dropped down to bantamweight and won another of the promotion’s grand prix tournaments to become a champion in two different weight classes. He then moved to ONE Championship shortly after that win and became the bantamweight champion there too, a title he held for 5 years the first time around and 3 years when he later regained it. His grappling has been one of his biggest strengths throughout his MMA career, as he has racked up 9 submission wins and an impressive 24-6 professional record.
This isn’t the first time that a return to BJJ competition has come up in fact and Bibiano Fernandes actually discussed it late in 2023, although he never specifically picked the IBJJF Pan Championship at the time. Fernandes is undoubtedly one of the most successful BJJ competitors to ever make the transition to MMA and now that he’s coming back to grappling again, fans will be eager to see how he fares up against those who have stuck with the sport the whole time. His first outing is in a masters division that he will clearly be a firm favorite in, but it’ll be interesting to see if he chooses to challenge himself against the current generation of competitors after this.
The IBJJF announced the news that Bibiano Fernandes was going to return to BJJ competition at the IBJJF Pan Championship in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
