Nicholas Meregali "Alemão"

Nicholas de Barcellos Meregali was born on May 27, 1994, in Santo Antônio das Missões, a small town in Brazil's southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul. His path into the sport was almost accidental: his younger brother came home from jiu-jitsu classes eager to test new techniques on someone, and Nicholas became the regular practice dummy. What started as sibling roughhousing turned into genuine fascination, and at age 16 he began formal training at the ACJJ academy in Santo Antônio da Patrulha under instructor Jeferson Adan. He progressed through the belts on a fairly conventional Brazilian competitive track, moving through the regional and national gi circuits before being promoted to black belt by Mario Reis in December 2016.

At 6'3" and competing in the super-heavyweight bracket, Meregali built a reputation as one of the most physically imposing yet technically fluid big men in gi jiu-jitsu. His game centers on an unusually mobile De La Riva guard for a man his size, aggressive guard passing built on top pressure, and a signature mounted triangle that has ended many of his matches. He won his first IBJJF World Championship title in 2017 while affiliated with Alliance, then added further World titles in 2019 and 2022, along with Brazilian National and Pan American gold. In 2023 he capped his gi dominance by winning the IBJJF Absolute Grand Prix, an invitational eight-man no-weight-class tournament with a $40,000 top prize, cementing his status as one of the best pure gi competitors of his generation. His 2021 World Championship run ended in a much-discussed disqualification for unsportsmanlike conduct during a match, a rare blemish that became one of the most talked-about incidents of that tournament.

The most dramatic turn of Meregali's career came in early 2022, when he left Brazil for Austin, Texas, to train under John Danaher at the newly formed New Wave Jiu Jitsu, joining Gordon Ryan and a roster of largely no-gi specialists. It was a striking decision for an athlete who had built his entire career in the gi and had almost no meaningful no-gi competitive record at the time. The gamble paid off quickly: at the 2022 ADCC World Championship, in his real no-gi debut on the sport's biggest stage, Meregali won a bronze medal in the under-99kg division and a silver medal in the openweight absolute division, results that immediately established him as a threat in both rulesets.

Meregali entered the 2024 ADCC World Championship as one of the favorites to medal again in the -99kg bracket, winning his opening match before a freak scramble in the quarterfinal against Michael Pixley left him with a dislocated shoulder. He later revealed the injury was severe, tearing both the anterior and posterior labrum along with surrounding tendons, requiring surgery and roughly five months of recovery. After a lengthy layoff, he returned to competition on February 12, 2026, at UFC BJJ 5 in Las Vegas, defeating fellow gi standout Nicholas Maglicic by unanimous decision in a heavyweight bout, signaling the start of a new chapter aligned with the sport's newest professional grappling promotion.

Meregali's significance to modern jiu-jitsu lies in his rare hybrid profile: a decorated, multiple-time gi World Champion who successfully reinvented himself as a legitimate no-gi ADCC medalist in his late twenties, at an age and career stage when most competitors are set in their ways. His willingness to leave an established, successful gi career behind to relearn grappling fundamentals under Danaher, and to do so at an elite level, has made him a reference point for other gi specialists considering the same crossover, and his combination of size, guard mobility, and mounted-triangle finishing remains one of the most distinctive skill sets in the super-heavyweight and openweight divisions.

Explosive top-pressure passer with a dominant De La Riva guard and a feared mounted-triangle finishing sequence