Demis Malloy Tenorio started jiu-jitsu in 1996, well before BJJ had taken its modern global shape, and built his life around it. A Gracie Barra black belt with a long teaching career on Spanish mats — including IBJJF 2017 competition for the GB banner — he now serves as head professor of Gracie Barra Jessheim alongside his wife and co-founder Eva Berge Tenorio.
The Jessheim project, opened in September 2023, was the first Gracie Barra academy in the Nordic region. For practitioners north of Copenhagen who wanted access to the Gracie Barra curriculum without travelling, his arrival made it possible for the first time.
Three decades into his career, Tenorio is the on-mat technical anchor of the GB programme in Norway — a Brazilian black belt running the day-to-day curriculum in a country that, until recently, had no Gracie Barra room at all.