Cassia Moura just capped off an incredible string of performances at the IBJJF World Championship 2024, completing a journey from blue to black belt in less than a year. She was promoted by her coach Bruno Bastos on the podium after winning a gold medal in the brown belt featherweight division and a bronze medal in the brown belt absolute. While that would have been a fantastic achievement to begin with, it was even more impressive given what Moura has accomplished over the last year leading up to this.
She actually stood on the very same podium 363 days ago at the IBJJF World Championship 2023, although she was winning her weight class as a blue belt back then. Going from blue to black belt in less than a year is unheard of, but Moura has since been on a rapid rise through the ranks thanks to a recent addition to the IBJJF belt promotion timelines. The organization decided to make the first change to them in decades at the end of 2022, when they announced that anyone winning a world championship would not have to wait any longer to be promoted to the next belt rank.
Moura was promoted to purple belt after that blue belt title in 2023 and she returned at the end of the year to compete in the IBJJF No Gi World Championship at her new belt level. That meant that she was eligible for another belt promotion and her coach Bastos clearly didn’t see any point in holding her back, so she was promoted to brown belt. Now after her third IBJJF world title in just under a year, Cassia Moura has received her black belt and will be able to compete among the very best grapplers in the world from now on.
Bruno Bastos announced the news that Cassia Moura had been promoted to black belt at the IBJJF World Championship in a recent post to her official Instagram account:
