Jonnatas Gracie will now be making his debut at the world’s most prestigious no gi grappling tournament after receiving an invite to compete at ADCC 2024. This moment has been a long time coming for Gracie and the story has been in the making for almost a decade now, since he first made a breakthrough appearance at ADCC Trials. This was all the way back in 2015, when he was an unknown 18 year-old blue belt with just 4 years of training behind him. He took a huge leap by competing in the under 77kg division of the ADCC South American Trials that year, entering a division with some of the best grapplers on the planet.
Gracie shocked both the crowd in attendance and his opponents on the mats when he beat 3 veteran competitors to make it all the way to the semi-finals of a tough division. He couldn’t make it past IBJJF No Gi Pan Championship winner Claudio Cardoso to get to the final but the bronze medal he earned from that tournament was the biggest accomplishment of his young career. He made the move to ATOS just 2 years later as a purple belt and won IBJJF World Championship gold medals at both purple and brown belt before being promoted to black belt in 2017 by the team’s head coach, Andre Galvao.
He has since gone on to become one of the top competitors in his weight class and he returned to the ADCC South American Trials earlier this year. He won 5 matches in a row to make it into the final this time but he narrowly missed out on winning an invite and had to settle for a silver medal instead. All hope was not lost for Jonnatas Gracie though and his goal of making it to ADCC 2024 was given another chance, as the promotion announced that he would be receiving an invite to make his debut in the under 77kg division anyway. This was done straight off the back of that phenomenal performance and an impressive win over ADCC veteran Nicky Ryan at UFC Fight Pass Invitational 5.
ADCC announced the news that Jonnatas Gracie would be receiving an invite to the under 77kg division at ADCC 2024 in a recent post to their official Instagram account: