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Two training partners meeting on the mat.Drawn in cream, forest green, and muted terracotta. People and objects are symbolic illustrations.
Portrait unavailable. General BJJ illustration; not a likeness of this person.Illustration: The BJJ Story

Walter Mattos Filho

Returned to Rio Grande do Sul in 1992 to fly helicopters, and with Zé Mário Sperry founded the team that became the Sul Jiu-Jitsu academy.

Biography

Walter Mattos Filho returned to Rio Grande do Sul in 1992 to work as a helicopter pilot. Jiu-jitsu travelled with him rather than drawing him back. He had been training for more than twenty years by then: the sport reached him in Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, through Carlson Gracie. Once he had settled there, he and Zé Mário Sperry started a team under a name that held both of theirs, Equipe Walter Mattos – Zé Mário. The club's own blog says that outfit was what the Sul Jiu-Jitsu academy grew out of. Lance! frames the same beginning differently, crediting the pair jointly with founding the old Sul Jiu-Jitsu itself. Published eleven years apart, the two accounts disagree about whether what the men started was a team or an academy, and agree that the two of them started it together. What they began in 1992 reached past the gym. Lance! reports two more strands: competitions staged around the state, and an exchange programme bringing fighters over from Rio de Janeiro, whom the paper called the best of the day. On the first jiu-jitsu federation in the state, the sources disagree about whose doing it was. Lance! presents it as another of the pair's joint foundations. The Sul Jiu-Jitsu blog, which in 2011 put the Federação Gaúcha de Jiu-Jitsu at more than a hundred affiliated academies and called Mattos its sitting president, credits him alone with creating it. The sources read for this profile do not show how long he held that office. On the Tuesday evening of 23 August 2011 the city council in Porto Alegre held a ceremony for him, marking what he had done as head of the state federation. Luciano Marcantônio, the councillor behind the proposal, justified it by counting jobs. Nearly a hundred Brazilian black-belt teachers, the majority of them from the state itself, had by his reckoning filled openings that Mattos's ventures created, and were making their living from the sport as a result. His own response turned on belonging rather than on what he had built: the city was where his roots were, he said, and where his family had been raised, and the feeling was one he struggled to name. Getting fighters onto a payroll was work in its own right. Beside the business he ran, he developed schemes meant to move athletes into the labour market so that the sport could keep them. On the Wednesday evening of 19 October 2011, the academy's Zona Sul branch in Porto Alegre advertised him as the main attraction of a master class. He cast it as a two-way affair — the aim, as he put it, was to learn as much as to hand on experience — and he argued that although a competition is won alone, it is training in company that makes an athlete genuinely competitive. Thirty years on, in June 2022, the pair were on the mat together again for a seminar in Porto Alegre; Lance! wrote it up as two old friends meeting. What Mattos singled out from that room was generational: teachers the partnership itself had produced, training beside the children of the students he and Sperry started with. Looking back on the three decades, he counted the return in two figures rather than in titles — the number of people the sport had fed, and the number of jobs it had generated — and he said the partnership would be an enduring one. Sperry credits him with the turn his own career took. Ahead of his coral belt ceremony in June 2026 he described Mattos as a partner in business and a close friend, and said it was Mattos who had steered him out of economics and into the sport. The report announcing that ceremony, set for 26 June 2026 at Sperry's head academy in Porto Alegre, named Mattos as a special participant in it.

Sources for this profile

  • Lance!, "Sperry e Walter Mattos celebram 30 anos da parceria que revolucionou o jiu-jitsu no RS", 18.06.2022.(opens in a new tab)

    • The partnership between Mattos and Zé Mário Sperry, begun in 1992, left Rio Grande do Sul with institutions rather than just a gym. Lance! credits the pair jointly with the state’s first jiu-jitsu federation and with the original Sul Jiu-Jitsu, and describes two further strands of the work: a competition circuit run across the state, and an exchange with fighters from Rio de Janeiro, who were reckoned the best of that era.

      Where in the source: Juntos, Sperry e Mattos não só fundaram a antiga Sul Jiu-Jitsu, como também a primeira Federação de Jiu-Jitsu do Rio Grande do Sul, promoveram competições pelo estado, intercâmbio com lutadores do Rio de Janeiro, que eram os melhores da época

      Accessed:

    • The two men were still teaching together three decades later: a seminar in Porto Alegre in June 2022 marked thirty years since the 1992 start, and Lance! covered it as a reunion of old friends.

      Where in the source: se reuniram em Porto Alegre para um seminário especial em celebração aos 30 anos do início do projeto de desenvolvimento da modalidade no Rio Grande do Sul, implementado por eles no longínquo ano de 1992

      Accessed:

    • Asked in 2022 what the partnership had amounted to, Mattos measured it in livelihoods rather than titles: he said it was rewarding to see how many people the two had helped feed through jiu-jitsu and how many jobs had come out of it, and that at the seminar he had seen instructors who came up through the partnership alongside the children of their earliest students.

      Where in the source: É gratificante ver quantas pessoas a gente ajudou a colocar comida na mesa através do jiu-jitsu, quantos empregos foram gerados.

      Accessed:

    • Mattos called the partnership a perennial one.

      Where in the source: "Essa parceria será perene", exaltou Walter Mattos

      Accessed:

    • Two separately published sources, eleven years apart and sharing no wording, agree on one point: the Sul Jiu-Jitsu outfit in Rio Grande do Sul was founded by Mattos together with Zé Mário Sperry, not by either man alone.

      Where in the source: Juntos, Sperry e Mattos não só fundaram a antiga Sul Jiu-Jitsu

      Accessed:

  • Sul Jiu-Jitsu Zona Sul (klubbens egen blogg), forsidearkivet med postene fra 22.08.2011, 25.08.2011, 31.08.2011 og 14.10.2011.(opens in a new tab)

    • Rio de Janeiro, not Rio Grande do Sul, is where he began. He took up the sport there in the 1970s, under Carlson Gracie.

      Where in the source: Walter Mattos conheceu o esporte na década de 70 pelas mãos do mestre Carlson Gracie, quando ainda vivia na cidade do Rio de Janeiro.

      Accessed:

    • His return to Rio Grande do Sul in 1992 was a move for work, not for jiu-jitsu: he came back to the state to fly helicopters, and brought more than twenty years of training with him.

      Where in the source: Em 1992, quando voltou ao Estado para exercer sua profissão de piloto de helicópteros, trouxe na bagagem mais de 20 anos de prática de jiu-jitsu.

      Accessed:

    • The Sul Jiu-Jitsu academy began as a two-man team carrying both founders’ names — Equipe Walter Mattos – Zé Mário — which Mattos set up with Sperry after settling in the state.

      Where in the source: Em solo gaúcho Mattos fundou, ao lado de Zé Mario Spery, a Equipe Walter Mattos – Zé Mário, que mais tarde daria origem à academia Sul Jiu-Jitsu (SJJ).

      Accessed:

    • More than a hundred academies were affiliated to the Federação Gaúcha de Jiu-Jitsu by 2011, when Mattos was its president. The club blog credits the creation of the body to him personally.

      Where in the source: Foi ele o responsável pela criação da Federação Gaúcha de Jiu-Jitsu (FGJJ), entidade da qual é o atual presidente e que conta hoje com mais de uma centena de academias filiadas.

      Accessed:

    • Porto Alegre city council held a ceremony for him on the evening of 23 August 2011, in his capacity as president of the state federation.

      Where in the source: O presidente da Federação gaúcha de Jiu-jitsu (FGJJ), Walter Mattos Filhho, será homenageado nesta terça-feira, 23, às 19h, na Câmara de Vereadores de Porto Alegre

      Accessed:

    • What he chose to say about the honour was about belonging rather than achievement: he said he had roots in Porto Alegre and had raised his family there, and that he found it hard to put the feeling into words.

      Where in the source: Receber essa distinção me honra muito. Eu tenho raízes nesta cidade. Formei minha família aqui.

      Accessed:

    • The councillor who proposed the honour, Luciano Marcantônio, put the case in terms of employment: by his count close to a hundred Brazilian black-belt instructors, most of them from Rio Grande do Sul, had taken up posts created by Mattos’s initiatives and had thereby made a profession of the sport.

      Where in the source: o engajamento de Mattos já levou quase uma centena de professores faixas-preta brasileiros, na sua maiorias gaúchos, a ocuparem vagas geradas a partir de suas iniciativas, tornando-os profissionais do esporte

      Accessed:

    • At the Zona Sul branch of Sul Jiu-Jitsu in Porto Alegre, he was billed as the draw for a master class on the evening of Wednesday 19 October 2011.

      Where in the source: O mestre Walter Mattos filho será a grande atração do Master Class de Jiu-jitsu que ocorre na próxima quarta-feira, 19, a partir das 19h30min, na filial Zona Sul da academia Sul Jiu-jitsu (SJJ) em Porto Alegre

      Accessed:

    • He framed that class as an exchange rather than a lecture, saying the aim was to pass on experience but also to learn, and arguing that although competition is individual, it is collective training that produces genuinely competitive athletes.

      Where in the source: Nosso objetivo é transmitir a nossa experiência, mas também aprender. Essa troca é fundamental e engrandece o jiu-jitsu

      Accessed:

    • Making a living from the mat was the thread running through his work off it. Alongside his business, he developed projects intended to place athletes in the labour market and let them earn their keep from fighting.

      Where in the source: Atualmente, também milita fortemente na profissionalização da arte marcial, desenvolvendo projetos que permitam inserir atletas no mercado de trabalho e que viabilizem que eles tirem seu sustento da luta.

      Accessed:

  • Portal do Vale Tudo (PVT), "Zé Mário Sperry recebe faixa coral e celebra legado que ajudou a moldar o jiu-jítsu e o MMA brasileiro", 23.06.2026.(opens in a new tab)

    • Sperry gives Mattos the credit for his own turn professional. He calls him his business partner and close friend, and says it was Mattos who talked him out of a career as an economist and into the sport.

      Where in the source: Vou ter a satisfação de receber a faixa coral do meu sócio e grande amigo, Walter Mattos, que foi o grande responsável pela minha transição de atleta amador para atleta profissional. Foi ele quem me incentivou a abandonar minha carreira de economista e me dedicar ao esporte

      Accessed:

    • A report of 23 June 2026 announced Mattos as a special participant in Sperry’s coral belt ceremony, due to be held at the Mario Sperry head academy in Porto Alegre on 26 June 2026.

      Where in the source: A cerimônia será realizada na Academia Mario Sperry Matriz, em Porto Alegre, com a participação especial do mestre Walter Mattos.

      Accessed:

Lineage

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