Nicholas Meregali: can a gi master convert to no-gi?

Quick answer: Nicholas Meregali is a Brazilian black belt from Rio Grande do Sul, promoted by Mario Reis and Jeferson Adan in December 2016. He is a three-time IBJJF black belt world champion (2017, 2019, and the 2022 absolute), and he took silver and bronze at the 2022 ADCC World Championship in his first ever appearance. He now trains under John Danaher at New Wave and competes for UFC BJJ. His career is the clearest evidence anyone has that a gi specialist can convert to elite no-gi.

On 12 February 2026, Meregali walked onto a mat at the Meta Apex in Nevada for the first time in seventeen months and beat Nicholas Maglicic by unanimous decision. Not a submission. A decision, 30-26, 30-25, 29-26.

For most competitors that is a Thursday. For Meregali it was the end of four surgeries — two on the shoulder, one on the knee, one on the elbow — that followed the single worst afternoon of his career.

This is a look at how a gi savant got to that room, and what his record proves about switching codes.

The best coloured belt anyone had seen

Meregali grew up in Santo Antônio, in Brazil's southernmost state, and started training at 16 at a small academy under Jeferson Adan. In September 2013 he moved to Porto Alegre to train full time under Mario Reis. By his own account to BJJEE, he lived inside the academy for the next five years.

That is a fairly common story in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which does not make it a small one. Five years of no privacy and no schedule of your own, in exchange for mat time.

What came out of it was the most decorated coloured-belt run of the decade. Worlds at purple and brown, Pans, Europeans, Brasileiros, Abu Dhabi Pro, most of them double golds. Reis and Adan promoted him to black belt in December 2016. BJJ Heroes had already named him the number one new black belt prospect for 2017.

Beating Leandro Lo in year one

He then went out and won the 2017 World Championship in his first year at black belt, beating Leandro Lo 2-0 in the final at 94kg. Lo was a five-time world champion and, at the time, the closest thing gi jiu-jitsu had to an unsolvable problem.

Meregali won the Brazilian Nationals in 2018 and 2019, took the 2019 world title at super heavyweight, and won the 2022 absolute title over Erich Munis after losing to the same man in the weight final days earlier. Three world titles at black belt. Along the way he was disqualified from the 2021 Worlds for showing his middle finger to a heckling spectator, which is either a footnote or the most Meregali thing in the record, depending on your view of him.

Lasso, De La Riva, and a relentless back habit

The word people reach for is "old-school," and for once it means something specific.

Meregali plays lasso and De La Riva guard, sweeps rather than stalls, and hunts the back relentlessly. His BJJ Heroes profile lists 62 of 86 recorded wins by submission — around 72 percent — and 24 of those are chokes from the back. The next most common are armbars, triangles and the loop choke, which he finishes more often than anyone else at his level.

The other number is stranger. Across that entire black belt record, BJJ Heroes logs zero submission losses. He got outpointed, he lost referee decisions, he got disqualified once. Until 2024, nobody tapped him.

That combination is why gi purists adopted him. He was winning at the highest level with a submission-first game at a time when the top of the division had drifted toward passing and points.

Gordon Ryan, a video shoot, and New Wave

In January 2022, filming an instructional for BJJ Fanatics, Meregali met Gordon Ryan, who was there for the same reason. They started training together, and Meregali joined New Wave in Austin under John Danaher not long after.

He made his no-gi debut that year at Who's Number One, armbarring Arnaldo Maidana. Then he got a surprise invitation to ADCC 2022, having never competed there.

ADCC 2022: the conversion, immediately

The 2022 result is the whole case in one weekend.

In the -99kg bracket he kimura'd Henrique Cardoso, beat Yuri Simões in the quarters, lost the semi-final to Craig Jones on a referee decision, and beat Rafael Lovato Jr. for bronze. He then entered the absolute, beat Giancarlo Bodoni 6-2, beat Tye Ruotolo in the semi-final, and lost the final to Simões 0-0 on penalties. He also took the event's best throw award.

Silver and bronze at ADCC, in his first appearance, against a division that had spent years specialising in exactly the ruleset he had just started learning. Less than a year of dedicated no-gi work. That is not a slow conversion.

In May 2023 he announced he would stop competing in IBJJF events entirely, and spent that year cleaning out the professional circuit: Pan double gold before the announcement, a mounted triangle on Pedro Marinho, an armbar on Roberto "Cyborg" Abreu in overtime, an arm-triangle on Kaynan Duarte, the IBJJF Absolute Grand Prix and its $40,000, and a rear naked choke on Felipe Pena. Jits Magazine named him gi grappler of the year.

The Pixley match

At ADCC 2024 he kimura'd Marcin Maciulewicz in the opening round and then lost his quarter-final to Michael Pixley.

The accounts differ on what to call it. Jits Magazine reported it as a submission and as the first submission loss of his black belt career. BJJ Heroes logs the method as an injury stoppage. What is not disputed is the outcome: his shoulder came apart, the surgeries followed, and he did not compete again for seventeen months.

Read alongside the 2022 result, that match is the counterweight. The conversion was real, and the exposure was real too. In no-gi, at ADCC pace, a specialist can find your one bad frame in ninety seconds.

Signing with the UFC, then picking a fight with CJI

Meregali came back in February 2026 having signed with UFC BJJ, and he came back talking.

He praised UFC BJJ's structure as an actual professional model, with performance bonuses and career progression, and he was blunt about the alternative: a sport with no money and no structure where athletes pay to compete. In the same conversation he said he believed the Craig Jones Invitational had entered grappling to divide the industry in a negative way rather than grow it. That went about as well as you would expect with the half of the community that watched CJI for free on YouTube and loved it.

Then in March 2026 he cast doubt on competing at ADCC 2026, which runs 12-13 September at the Tauron Arena in Kraków. "Honestly, I think it's a hassle to go to Poland," he told the interview later published by BJJEE, adding that he had no desire to go and would need convincing. He stopped short of ruling it out.

One more thing, and this is where I am going to disappoint some readers. Meregali is widely discussed in the community as being open about ayahuasca and about a spiritual practice that shaped how he trains and competes. I could not find a credible on-record source for the specifics — no interview, no publication, nothing he said in his own words that I could verify. So I am not going to characterise a real person's inner life from message board consensus. If he has spoken about it, that is his to describe, and the position I am left with is that I could not confirm what he said or when.

So can a gi master convert?

The answer is yes, with two conditions, and Meregali demonstrated both.

The first is that the underlying skill has to be submission-oriented rather than position-oriented. A gi player whose game is grip-dependent stalling has nothing to port over. A gi player who hunts the back, finishes from the top, and understands how to keep an opponent's spine bent has most of the work already done. Meregali's back attacks did not care that the collar disappeared.

The second is that you have to accept the leg lock tax. No one who learned to grapple in the gi has the same reflexive leg awareness as somebody raised on inside heel hooks, and the fix is years, not months. That is the cost, and it is why gi converts tend to look brilliant and brittle at the same time.

Team-level context helps too, and the team rankings on our power index show how concentrated elite results still are in a handful of rooms. Meregali did not convert alone. He converted inside the best no-gi laboratory in the world.

The takeaway

Meregali's ledger reads: three world titles, one of the best submission rates ever recorded at black belt, a first-attempt ADCC double medal, one catastrophic quarter-final, four surgeries, and a comeback that started with a points decision instead of a finish.

He is 32 now, plans to compete around four times in 2026, and says he wants both UFC BJJ titles at 205 pounds and above. Whether he goes to Kraków is anyone's guess, including his.

What his career already settled is the argument that used to run in every gym: that gi and no-gi are different sports and the best gi player in the world would be exposed the moment the jacket came off. He was exposed once, in 2024, by a very specific attack. Before that he took silver and bronze at the hardest tournament there is, less than a year into learning it.

Build a game that survives the jacket coming off

Track what you train, gi and no-gi, and the holes show up faster than they do in your memory. The Let's Roll training log keeps both in one place.

FAQ

How many world titles does Nicholas Meregali have? Three at black belt: the 2017 World Championship at 94kg, the 2019 title at super heavyweight, and the 2022 absolute title. He also took silver in his weight division in 2022, and won world titles at purple and brown belt before that.

Has Nicholas Meregali won ADCC? No. He has one ADCC silver, from the 2022 absolute division, and one bronze from the -99kg division the same weekend. That was his debut appearance. He lost in the quarter-finals at ADCC 2024 and suffered a shoulder injury that required multiple surgeries.

Who does Nicholas Meregali train with now? He trains under John Danaher at New Wave, having joined the team in 2022 after meeting Gordon Ryan at a video shoot. He returned to competition with UFC BJJ in February 2026 after seventeen months out.

Why did Meregali stop competing in the IBJJF? He announced the decision in May 2023, during the build-up to a Who's Number One match, and shifted to professional invitationals and no-gi events instead. He had won the Pan Championship earlier that year and continued competing in the gi outside the IBJJF.