ONE Championship has just announced another three fantastic signings to their submission grappling division in the form of Renato Canuto, Jessa Khan, and Tainan Dalpra. The promotion has gone from strength to strength in recent years and they’ve been putting more and more focus on submission grappling lately, even going so far as to hire the legendary Leo Vieira as their Vice President of Grappling. It’s Vieira’s association with the promotion that has no doubt helped bring the first signing to their attention, as Canuto has trained under him extensively in the past and is part of the same Checkmat affiliation.
Of course, Canuto is still a phenomenal grappler in his own right anyway. He is an IBJJF world champion both in and out of the gi as recently as 2021 and he has won two KASAI Pro Grand Prix events in two different weightclasses. Canuto doesn’t just get good results either as he’s known as an incredibly entertaining grappler, his match with Garry Tonon was widely-regarded as the most exciting match to take place at ADCC 2019 and was part of the reason why Canuto received an invite back to compete again in 2022.
The other two competitors signed to ONE Championship are both representatives of Art of Jiu-Jitsu, with Jessa Khan becoming the first black belt to come from the Mendes brothers’ kids program back in 2020 and Tainan Dalpra following suit just a matter of days later. The pair have been two of the brightest young stars in the sport for quite some time with Khan reaching the podium of the IBJJF world championships on her first attempt and Dalpra winning the event twice already. As the ONE Championship roster of grapplers grows, all three of these latest signings will get plenty of opportunities to compete against fellow elite BJJ athletes in front of thousands of fans.
ONE Championship announced the news that Renato Canuto, Jessa Khan, and Tainan Dalpra have all signed with the promotion in a post to their official Instagram account:
