Joao Miyao is one of the top BJJ competitors of his generation, and he’s suffered plenty of injuries over the course of his career. It’s only natural of course, as competing at the highest level of a combat sport is incredibly tough on the body. Even with the best approaches to both injury prevention and injury rehabilitation, everyone is going to have to deal with injuries at some point. That problem only gets exacerbated at the highest level of the sport, where competitors are financially incentivised to take more risks and fight their way out of submissions until the very last second.
Miyao is no exception to that tendency, and in fact both him and his brother Paulo Miyao are famous for fighting their way out of leglocks that are way past the point of causing damage. Sometimes taking those risks has actually paid off in the short-term, as Miyao has been able to win matches when other most competitors would have been submitted instead. One of the most famous examples of that approach came at ADCC 2019, where Tye Ruotolo caught Miyao in a kneebar during the bronze medal match. Ruotolo applied tremendous pressure and forced Miyao’s knee to bend at a brutal angle, but Miyao refused to tap and actually won the match on points.
That’s just one example of Joao Miyao pushing his body to the limits during his BJJ career and he’s clearly suffered a lot of injuries as a result. His ankle and fingers all show signs of damage that likely comes from broken bones in the past, while his shoulder has clearly suffered some severe damage as well. Miyao also shared some footage of his cauliflower ear, a common injury among grapplers that tends to happen to pretty much everyone over a long enough timeframe. Although he’s one of the few competitors to be this open about it, most of the men and women at his level will have suffered similar injuries over the years.
Joao Miyao shared the list of injuries that he’s suffered during his BJJ career in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
