Andressa Cintra

Andressa Mezari Cintra was born on August 4, 1995, in Campo Mourão, Brazil, and started training Brazilian jiu-jitsu at age 14. She built her early competitive résumé at Checkmat in Curitiba under Sebastian Lalli, winning IBJJF World titles as a purple belt in 2016 and a brown belt in 2017, along with multiple Brazilian Nationals titles in the years leading up to her black belt promotion.

Lalli awarded Cintra her black belt on the podium after her 2017 brown-belt World title win. She wasted little time adjusting to the top division, breaking through with her first black belt IBJJF World Championship in 2019. In 2018 she relocated to Houston, Texas, married fellow competitor Lucas Valente, and joined Gracie Barra, where she has trained under Vinicius "Draculino" Magalhães ever since.

Cintra has gone on to become one of the most dominant middleweights of her generation, adding IBJJF World Championship titles in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, along with Pan American titles in 2020 and 2021 and a CBJJ Brazilian Nationals title in 2022. She also stepped up in weight to win an IBJJF No-Gi World Championship in the heavyweight division in 2023, and she has been ranked the world's number one female black belt middleweight on the IBJJF gi rankings.

Her game reflects her long developmental arc through a traditional Brazilian academy system: strong fundamentals, patient guard passing, and a defensively sound approach that has allowed her to compete consistently at the top of the middleweight bracket year after year, rather than relying on flash finishes.

As of 2024-2025, Cintra remains an active, top-ranked competitor and instructor at Gracie Barra Texas in Houston, continuing to compete on the IBJJF gi and no-gi circuits while helping build out the academy's competition team.

A disciplined, fundamentals-first middleweight competitor whose game is built on strong guard retention and top pressure, honed over more than two decades on th