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Nicholas Meregali

“Alemão”

Source: bjjheroes.com

Nicholas Meregali beat Leandro Lo for a world title in his first black belt season, then joined John Danaher's New Wave team and took two ADCC medals.

Biography

Nicholas Meregali is a Brazilian grappler who won the IBJJF World Championship in his first season at black belt, beating Leandro Lo in the 2017 heavyweight final, and added world titles in 2019 and 2022. In 2022 he also joined John Danaher and Gordon Ryan's New Wave team and began competing without the gi, the jacket and pants of the traditional uniform, taking two medals at his first ADCC World Championship. Two teachers Born on 27 May 1994 in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, Meregali was 16 when he joined the ACJJ academy in Santo Antônio. His first instructor there, Jeferson Adan, guided him to many state-level titles and, at blue belt, a Brazilian national title. His coach and teammates call him Alemão, Portuguese for "German"; BJJ Heroes connects the nickname to his blond hair and height. In September 2013, as his blue belt years came to a close, he moved to the state capital, Porto Alegre, to train full time under Mario Reis in a more competition-focused room with stronger training partners. He kept visiting Adan's academy regularly. BJJ Heroes, which describes Reis as one of the most accomplished competitors to come out of southern Brazil, credits him with lifting Meregali's competition game. The same site traces his lineage through Reis, Sylvio Behring and Alvaro Barreto back to Helio and Carlos Gracie. By BJJ Heroes' account, many regarded him at purple and brown belt as the best colored-belt gi competitor in the world. Its list of his titles includes IBJJF world titles at purple belt in 2014 and 2015, along with Pan, European Open and Abu Dhabi World Pro titles at purple and brown. In 2015 the list has him winning the purple belt world title both in his weight class and in the open class, which has no weight limit. At the 2016 World Championship, competing for Alliance, he won both the brown belt heavyweight division and the brown belt open class. In December 2016 both of his teachers, Reis and Adan, gave him his black belt, and BJJ Heroes named him its number one new black belt prospect for 2017. The 2017 world final Six months after his promotion, at the Long Beach Pyramid in June 2017, Meregali won the heavyweight division of the IBJJF World Championship for Alliance International. His opponent in the final was Leandro Lo, whom Graciemag called the IBJJF's top-ranked male competitor. Lance! pointed out that Lo already held world titles at lightweight, middleweight and, twice, medium-heavyweight, and had not lost in the category for five years. According to BJJ Heroes, Meregali beat Helton José, Lucas Leite and Dimitrius Souza to reach the final and won it 2-0 on points. Lance! called the title a milestone for a young fighter shaped by Mario Reis. Talking to Graciemag after the final, he said he had never seen anyone as the favorite and had made no special plan for Lo. He described himself as a fighter who goes forward and attacks, and Lo as one who waits for an opponent's mistakes, so his only concern had been to avoid careless exchanges. He called himself a perfectionist who wanted his jiu-jitsu to become invulnerable as fast as possible; he was happy with the title, but wanted more. Champion at Alliance At the 2018 World Championship he took bronze in both the super heavyweight division and the open class. In the open class quarter-final he met Felipe Pena for the first time. Pena scored an early sweep, but Meregali reached his back and finished him with a gi choke, the first of three meetings between them. Lance! portrayed him in January 2019 as a competitor rarely seen smiling at tournaments. He kept to strict concentration and seclusion before he competed, a habit the paper likened to the samurai, and always arrived with headphones on and a jacket over his gi. In the same interview he said that 2018 had changed him a great deal and that handling life as a world champion had been complicated; for 2019 he wanted to recover the approach of his purple and brown belt years. He was training at Alliance's headquarters in Porto Alegre, which he said offered every training style and body type he met in competition. He liked teaching, he said, but had no wish to open an academy or live abroad. The interview previewed a BJJ Stars superfight with Lo in São Paulo on 23 February 2019. The two had met once at brown belt and three times at black belt, and Meregali said he knew Lo's toreando and knee-cut guard passes, his two guard sweeps and how he entered single- and double-leg takedowns. BJJ Heroes records a 4-0 points win for Meregali. At the 2019 World Championship he won the super heavyweight division for Alliance, with Mahamed Aly second. In October 2019 he won the absolute grand prix at the second BJJ Stars event, held at Clube Hebraica in São Paulo, beating Victor Hugo and Lucas Hulk on points before submitting Gustavo Batista with a kimura in the final. BJJ Heroes also lists Brazilian National titles for him in 2018, 2019, when he won both his weight class and the absolute, as the open class is also called, and 2022. New Wave and no-gi In January 2022, after filming an instructional for BJJ Fanatics, Meregali met and trained with Gordon Ryan, who was part of the same crew. They began training together regularly, and Meregali soon joined Ryan and John Danaher's New Wave team. In February ADCC invited him to the under 99 kg division of its 2022 World Championship, although he had yet to compete at a high level without the gi or under rules that allow heel hooks; JitsMagazine pointed to his inventive ways of taking the back. His first no-gi match came in March 2022 at a Who's Number One event, where he submitted Arnaldo Maidana with an armbar. The gi titles kept coming. At the 2022 World Championship, where the IBJJF results list him under DreamArt, he won the open class ahead of Erich Munis and took silver behind Munis in super heavyweight. It was his third black belt world title in BJJ Heroes' list. ADCC 2022 was the first major no-gi tournament he had entered. In the under 99 kg division he submitted Henrique Ceconi with a kimura and beat Yuri Simões on a judges' decision, lost the semi-final to Craig Jones on another decision, and took bronze by beating Rafael Lovato Jr on penalties. In the absolute he beat Vinicius 'Trator' Ferreira, his teammate Giancarlo Bodoni 6-2 on points and Tye Ruotolo on a decision, then lost the final to Simões 0-2 on penalties given for sitting to guard. ADCC's best throw award for 2022 went to him for a throw in that semi-final against Ruotolo, a match in which he landed an uchi mata, a judo throw. The gi and the IBJJF Danaher coached him in the gi as well. Preparing for the 2023 Pan Championship at New Wave Jiu-Jitsu, Meregali said in an interview posted by FloGrappling that Danaher was as strong a coach with the gi as without it. As he put it, the gap between the two formats was mostly the jacket and pants; some positions could not cross over but could be adapted, and Danaher knew how to see a technique, apply it and reproduce it. At the 2023 Pan he won both the ultra heavyweight division and the open class. In May 2023, as the reigning IBJJF absolute world champion, he announced that he would stop competing in IBJJF tournaments. He called the gi the place he came from and his passion, and said that after about a year of no-gi training he still felt like a low belt in that format. In another interview that May, with MMA Hoje, he called the decision permanent unless the federation committed to professionalizing the sport, naming the rules, pay, streaming and media exposure. He said his requests had been turned down and that he would make his own way in other promotions. On 18 May 2023 he headlined Who's Number One 18 in the promotion's first gi match and submitted Pedro Marinho with a mounted triangle choke. In his post-fight speech he called out whoever would win the next IBJJF world absolute title for a gi match on a later WNO card. That month he also announced a gi instructional to be released free on BJJ Fanatics, which JitsMagazine presented as a way to give back to the community and draw more attention to gi competition. BJJ Fanatics sells a series of his instructionals, among them introductions to his gi and no-gi systems and volumes on open guard attacks and guard passing. More superfights followed. At UFC Fight Pass Invitational 4 on 29 June 2023 he beat Roberto 'Cyborg' Abreu with an armbar in overtime. At Who's Number One 19 on 10 August he submitted his long-time rival Kaynan Duarte with an arm-triangle choke, which by JitsMagazine's count put him 3-2 ahead in their series. Despite what he had said in May, he entered the IBJJF Absolute Grand Prix, an eight-man tournament with no weight limits held on 1 September 2023. To help him prepare, Gordon Ryan began training in a gi, with Danaher supervising. Meregali won the event, submitting Francisco Lo with a smother choke and Gutemberg Pereira with a lapel choke, then beating Victor Hugo 2-0 on points in the final. On 10 December, at UFC Fight Pass Invitational 5, he finished Felipe Pena with a rear-naked choke in their second meeting, the submission he had asked fans to choose before the match. JitsMagazine named him its Male Grappler of the Year in the gi for 2023, counting 11 gi matches without a loss and 9 submissions, and pointing to his wins over Victor Hugo and Erich Munis. Late in 2023, answering fan questions in a video, he said jiu-jitsu would be his only focus for the next seven or eight years and that once he retired he hoped to become an actor in Hollywood. In 2024 he took Matheus Diniz's back and finished him with a rear-naked choke at UFC Fight Pass Invitational 6 on 3 March, after Diniz had moved up in weight to face him. On 10 May he headlined Who's Number One 23, taking mount on Vagner Rocha and finishing him with an armbar at 13:05. BJJ Heroes' record of his matches lists 86 wins and 16 losses, with 62 of the wins by submission; its most frequent finish is a choke from the back. It gives the lasso and De La Riva guards as his favorite positions. Away and back At ADCC 2024 he submitted Marcin Maciulewicz with a kimura in the opening round of the under 99 kg division, then lost to Michael Pixley in the quarter-final. It was his last match for 17 months. Answering questions on Instagram in February 2025, he said the gi was his passion and no-gi only a temporary professional choice while the sport grew in the United States, and that he meant to return to gi competition. He returned at UFC BJJ 5 on 12 February 2026 and beat Nicholas Maglicic by unanimous decision. In March he told MMA Hoje he had little desire to go to ADCC 2026 in Poland and called the trip a hassle, though he did not rule it out. Spaten booked him against Felipe Pena for a third match on 29 August 2026. At the press conference before it he ruled out a move to MMA, saying grapplers and MMA fighters should respect each other's fields and that he was content with grappling. The match in São Paulo was contested without the gi over three rounds. Pena built a lead with takedowns, and although Meregali won the third round, Pena took a 29-28 unanimous decision, his first win in their three meetings.

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