Fabio Martins started BJJ in Brazil at 16, working up through the early coloured belts under Eduardo Brigadeiro before his life took him north. He moved to Norway in 2012, joining the small group of Brazilian-born practitioners who would later make up the technical layer of Norwegian academies in the 2020s.
His black belt came in 2023, from Professor Renato Tavares de Moraes — the Carlson Gracie 4th-degree black belt who anchors KDT Jiu-Jitsu Sandvika. That promotion sequence wired Martins directly into the Carlson Gracie line on Norwegian soil, with his daily teaching now running out of the KDT room in greater Oslo.
In a country still importing most of its Brazilian black belts ready-made, Martins is the rarer figure: a Brazilian who was promoted in Norway, by a Norwegian-based black belt, in a Norwegian academy. That trajectory itself is part of what makes KDT Sandvika's identity distinct.