Dream Art founder and leader Isaque Bahiense has just announced that he intends to make the transition to MMA, focusing on no gi grappling only in the future. Bahiense has historically been more of a gi competitor and has reached the highest levels of the sport, winning an IBJJF World Championship in 2018. He’s reached the podium of the event several more times since then, but he’s now revealed that the 2024 edition will be his final attempt to add another title to his collection. After that, he will be focusing his training time on no gi and making the switch to MMA instead.
Although Bahiense is almost 28 and would be making the switch pretty late in his athletic career, he already has a good foundation to build on. Not only is he a fantastic gi grappler, but he has a decent amount of no gi experience and has even won ADCC Trials in the past. He also has connections with Nova Uniao from his time training under Fabio Andrade in Bangu, so he has plenty of access to elite-level MMA instruction as well. Bahiense has a lot going in his favor so It’ll be interesting to see what kind of impact he makes and how far he can go in the sport.
Isaque Bahiense announced the news that he was going to make the transition to MMA in a recent post to his official Instagram account. The original statement was made in Portuguese, and a translation can be found below:
“I started at Nova Uniao Bangu in 2007 and with that I followed the team’s entire success story in MMA. At the time I had this ambition and after I moved to São Paulo I ended up losing that desire a little. In recent years this has been reigniting, in 2024 I will do my last Jiu Jitsu World Championship and then I will dedicate myself to fighting no gi and becoming UFC champion.”
