Two of the most successful competitors on the ATOS roster, Kaynan Duarte and Lucas ‘Hulk’ Barbosa, have both now stepped away from the team publicly after the organization and one of it’s founders have been rocked by scandal. They are just the latest in a huge list of competitors and coaches to leave ATOS, but they are two of the most high-profile examples to do so in public fashion. The organization has now lost dozens of affiliated academies all around the world and competitors at all levels of the sport after Alexa Herse came forward publicly with misconduct allegations against Andre Galvao.
While the allegations were initially vague and only reported on social media, Andre Galvao came out publicly to describe them as ‘false rumours’. He hasn’t made any other statement since then but Herse coming forward appears to have sparked a change in approach from the organization themselves, as they announced that both Andre and Angelica Galvao would be removed from their positions. This led to much speculation about who would possibly want to step into the role of head coach, particularly with the allegations being so recent and so many of their top competitors and coaches leaving.
The official website about us section of the ATOS headquarters website now states that ‘Atos Jiu-jitsu HQ is led by Sarah Galvao.’ She is also listed specifically as the head coach in their pricing and membership section and two other coaches are named specifically. Rolando Samson is listed as their adult fundamentals instructor and Michael Perez is listed as their no gi (all belts) professor at the time of writing. There are still several other competitors who have not publicly declared that they would be leaving ATOS, so some of these will likely remain as well.
Kaynan Duarte shared his statement to explain that he would be leaving ATOS in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
Lucas ‘Hulk’ Barbosa is in a similar situation to Duarte as an elite competitor who was previously representing ATOS, but he also has his own academy to think about as well. Barbosa confirmed in his statement that ATOS Northwest has always been independently owned and would now be removing their affiliation to begin the process of rebranding:
