He was widely considered the very best brown belt in the world in 2016, at the end of the year though, 22 year old Nicholas Meregali was promoted up to black belt by the great Mario Reis just last December. In his very first competition as a black belt he did something really, really, crazy… He beat the one and only jiu jitsu legend Xande Ribeiro at the Brazil National Pro in the final match for the 94kg weight class.
The Xande Ribeiro (36 years old) has won the world championship 7 times at black belt!
He’s also an ADCC champion.
Both Xande and the newcomer Mergali submitted all three of their opponents