Are you too old to become an IBJJF World Champion?

We try to the settle adult vs. masters debate using data collected from last week's IBJJF Nogi Worlds

This year we saw the youngest ever IBJJF world champion emerge: Newly promoted rookie black belt Cassia Moura, 18, defeated three 30+ year old veterans on her way to gold, including six time black belt world champion Tammi Musumeci, 30, and two time black belt world champion Amanda Canuto, 30. We also saw the very young Anabel Lopez Beard, 19, in her first six months at black belt, win the heavyweight division after three hard scraps.

This begs the question: Are the female divisions maturing enough where only young athletes who trained since childhood can reach the top of the podium? We’re watching the rise of phenoms now: Helena Crevar, Ashlee and Mia Funegra, and Sarah Galvao, to name a few well-known teenage stars already in the spotlight with high expectations.

With the help of Creonte Media, we took a look at the data. We compared the ages of all 54 female black belt adult competitors as well as their successes and losses. 37 percent of competitors were over 30 years old, or “masters” competitors. Six competitors were over 35.

This year the oldest gold medalist was light-feather Jhenifer Aquino, 30, who previously won the tournament in 2022 when she was 28. But, over half of silver medalists were also “masters” competitors. Impressively, Caitlin Murdock made her way to the medium-heavy black belt finals at the age of 36.

So what does this mean for everyone approaching their thirtieth birthday? Should they stop competing in adult divisions? Does being older or younger really give an athlete an advantage? Is it harder to win more matches against young’uns when you get older?

When we put our competitors head to head, the younger competitor won 67 percent of the time. The “teenage” champions, Cassia Moura and Anabel Lopez swept all of their older competition with the exception of Brianna Ste-Marie, who beat Lopez by points.

Masters competitors won just 10 matches over their adult counterparts. Jhenifer Aquino, 30, and Amanda Canuto, 30, were the only two “masters” who won more than one match against an under 30 counterpart.

We took a look at athletes who won the highest number of matches over the course of two days, including their open class matches. Brianna Ste-Marie, 28, won the most matches last weekend, six total divided evenly between the lightweight division and the open. Anabel Lopez, 19, won five matches among the heavyweight division and the open. Elisabeth Clay and Gabi Pessanha, both 24, won four matches each.

There were no masters athletes who won any matches in the open class. All other winners and podium finishes won three or fewer matches.

About the data

Athlete ages collected by Creonte Media. Brackets and matches collected from bjjcompsystem.com. Matches won by “no-show” or “walkover” were not included. Athletes who “no-showed” were not included.