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Tainan Dalpra

Tainan Dalpra became a four-time world champion at AOJ while developing a teaching role from children's classes to technical seminars.

Biography

At Art of Jiu-Jitsu in California, Tainan Dalpra's work spans world-championship competition, early-morning classes and teaching children. A black belt under Guilherme Mendes, he became a four-time IBJJF black-belt world champion in 2026. From Florianópolis to California Born in Florianópolis in 2000, Tainan Dalpra Costa was introduced to jiu-jitsu at five by his father, Deivid Soares. They trained together at Everson Ávila's academy for three years before Dalpra moved to AS Academy. Recalling those early years in a 2020 interview with BJJ Heroes, he described training alongside adults because there were no other children at his first gym. AS offered a more competition-oriented environment. His first visit to the United States came in 2014 for the Pan Kids competition. During that trip he visited Art of Jiu-Jitsu, or AOJ, and met the Mendes brothers. At fourteen, he moved to Costa Mesa to train under Guilherme Mendes, becoming an early participant in their Believe & Achieve scholarship program, which brought promising young athletes into a structured training environment. The move also depended on his family. Speaking to Jornal Offline in September 2025, Dalpra recalled that his father stayed in California for six months to help him settle in. Afterward, his father offered him the option of returning home if he struggled. Dalpra missed his family but did not want to give up his goal of becoming a world champion. He credited both parents with financial and emotional sacrifices, remembering drives home from training when he and his father imagined a future of traveling to teach and compete. Building a competitive career At the 2018 IBJJF Worlds, Dalpra won adult blue-belt middleweight and finished second in the blue-belt open class, competing under the Atos Jiu-Jitsu name. During the pandemic interruption in 2020, he said he continued private training with AOJ teammates and Guilherme Mendes, preparing for competition at black belt. Mendes awarded him that belt on the Pan Championship podium in October 2020. Dalpra won adult black-belt middleweight at the 2021 Worlds for AOJ, with Isaque Bahiense taking silver. He retained the title in 2022, when the final against Andy Murasaki required him to recover from an early deficit. In the IBJJF's account, Murasaki scored a takedown before Dalpra swept from the bottom to the top. Dalpra then passed his opponent's defending legs twice to build an 8–2 lead and finished with a lapel choke. In 2023 he took world silver behind Jansen Gomes. That November, competing without the gi uniform at WNO 21, he won his debut for the promotion against Troy Russell by armbar. Dalpra's 2025 campaign brought middleweight gold at the Europeans, Pans, Campeonato Brasileiro and Worlds—all in the adult black-belt division. The IBJJF recognized his victories across the four Grand Slam events that calendar year. Looking back on the Worlds in his September interview with Jornal Offline, he said he had arrived with doubts and fear, regained focus with his coach's support and experienced the third world title as a personal relief. He won the Europeans, Pans and Brasileiro again in 2026. After the Brasileiro, the IBJJF recognized his second Grand Slam award for a season that began with the 2025 Worlds and continued through those three 2026 championships. At the subsequent 2026 Worlds, he again took middleweight gold, with Natan Chueng Freitas second. The federation reported that all four of Dalpra's matches ended in submissions. Teaching alongside competing Dalpra was contributing to seminars before he reached black belt. At a two-day event in Hamilton, Ontario, in February 2019, he assisted Gui Mendes while still a purple belt. Participant Anthony Norman Chandler described Dalpra contributing instruction on the first day and teaching a leg-drag pass on the second. Chandler also joined an hour-long group private lesson with him. A question about an open-guard position led into the mechanics of the berimbolo, an inverting route toward an opponent's back. Chandler's account describes individual encouragement as participants worked through difficult movements, giving a view of Dalpra's teaching beyond the seminar demonstrations. AOJ now lists Dalpra among its head professors. In a Kingz athlete interview, Felipe Goulart named him as an inspiration and described starting his training day with Dalpra's 6 a.m. class. His published Longstep Masterclass curriculum shows how he organizes one area of his game for students. The longstep is a guard-passing movement used to work around an opponent's legs. The course starts with movement drills, posture, grips and positioning, then develops entries and finishes according to the opponent's reactions. It also lists live-training examples, discussion of common errors and match analysis with Gui Mendes, alongside Dalpra-led classes for children aged five to seven, children aged eight to thirteen and an adult fundamentals class. In his September 2025 interview, Dalpra said working with children had made him more understanding. He felt instructors needed to know how to relate to children if they wanted them to stay in the sport. He also described a hope for after his competitive career: to work with his father on free community classes where he grew up.

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