Cole Abate has continued his fantastic run of form by becoming the lightweight brown belt world champion at the IBJJF world championship 2023. Although he’s not quite competing at the highest level of the sport in the gi just yet, he’s been competing at that level in no gi for quite some time. In fact he actually won the prestigious ADCC North American trials while he was still a 16 year-old blue belt, defeating many more experienced competitors along the way. Although Abate wasn’t able to get out of the opening round at ADCC 2022, he had already announced his arrival at the top of the sport and it was clear that he was one to watch for the future.
He’s been going from strength to strength since then, winning the IBJJF European Championship at purple belt and being promoted on the podium immediately afterward. He was clearly ready for the step up in competition as well, because he’s been putting in the work on the IBJJF open circuit and winning multiple gold medals there. All of this culminated in the moment that he stepped onto the mats at the IBJJF world championship as a brown belt and attempted to continue his streak of winning world titles at every belt level in the sport.
Cole Abate swept through the lightweight division and defeated 5 tough opponents in order to become a brown belt IBJJF world champion, putting in one of the best performances of the event so far. It won’t be long at all now before Abate is competing at black belt and although he’ll be amongst the best in the sport from that point on, it’s not hard to imagine him finding a similar level of success. There’s still a long time left in his career, and he’s in a position to do some amazing things if he can continue his development.
Cole Abate announced the news that he had become the IBJJF lightweight brown belt world champion in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
