It doesn’t take a lot for Mahamed Aly Santos
Da Silva to be happy. Give him “a gi, a tatami,”
and some food for his table and he’s good to
go. Mahamed is a fast-rising black belt who left
Brazil, and everything known and comfortable to
him, to chase a dream, not endless wealth, fame,
and riches. Mohamed’s dream is a simple one; to
use the opportunities jiu jitsu has given him and
pay it forward by creating opportunity for others.
This is his story.

Becoming a Striker
Mahamed was born 23 years ago in Brazil. His
father loved combat sports and named his son af-
ter his boxing idol. It almost seemed prescient of
his father to name his child after one of the most
thrilling athletes of all time, because Mahamed is
an exciting fighter to watch on the mats. He re-
cently won his first pair of major titles as a black
belt at the 2017 IBJJF European Open and No
Gi Opens, and is quickly becoming a force to be
reckoned with in high-level competition. He has
his sights set on Worlds and ADCC.

Before Mahamed found his passion in jiu jitsu,
he was a tall and lanky kid with tons of energy
to burn. He grew up humbly, “with no money,”
in Gardenia Azul in West Rio De Janeiro. City of
God, the favela depicted in the famed movie by
Fernando Meirelles is “just around the corner”
from where Mahamed grew up. His parents en-
rolled him in a special school where courses ran
for 10 hours each day, to learn a technical craft
and to keep him away from the less fortunate side
of daily life in poverty.

Mahamed’s strenuous curriculum left little time for
sports and play. Not having an outlet to burn en-
ergy led to some anxiety growing up. He noted,
“I went to a professional school so I could learn
regular schooling and a profession; I studied
programming, software design. I was supposed
to go to college for it after high school, but I
didn’t because I focused on jiu jitsu. I did a lot
of sports, but when I got in high school I didn’t
have a chance to anymore, and I was feeling su-
per stressed when I was like fifteen, and we didn’t
understand because I was a calm kid. So, to get
rid of the stress, I started doing kickboxing to see
if it was from not having sports in my life. The kick-
boxing helped a lot.”

A

L

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Mahamed began training in
kickboxing because he want-
ed to become an MMA fighter
one day. He recalls jiu jitsu be-
ing off-putting at first, “A lot of
my friends used to train jiu jitsu
back then, but I didn’t like it. I
was like, ‘uh, no; I’m not gonna
hug other guys,’ you know? I
was saying that, but they were
looking happy training jiu jit-
su, super excited and always
talking about jiu jitsu. I kept
thinking to myself, ‘Man, why
are they liking that so much?’

MAHAMED