Michelle Nicolini signs with ONE Championship

Eight-time Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world champion Michelle Nicolini, 34, has joined Evolve MMA Fight Team, and signed with ONE Championship. She is currently training with ONE Women’s Atomweight Champion Angela Lee, and the rest of the world-class fighters and coaches at the headquarters in Singapore.

I just moved to Singapore to train full-time at Evolve MMA and I already signed with ONE Championship, said the Brazilian to Yahoo Sports. I am super excited to have my first fight, and I think we really have the best team at Evolve MMA.

I will have to adapt my game to MMA because BJJ is not the same. I must learn Muay Thai, wrestling, and boxing, but my dream is to bring one more belt to Evolve MMA.

Nicolini’s first martial art was Capeira, but the desire to compete led her to BJJ in 2000; she lost three competitions in a row. However, just six years later, she was awarded a black belt.

I got my black belt at the podium in the worlds in 2006, after I almost lost to a black belt. I was a brown belt back then, but they used to put brown and black belts together because there wasn’t a big number of girls. That was very special for me.

She would go on to win the black belt world championship eight times, and eventually became one of just seven women inducted in the BJJ Hall of Fame. Every seeking challenge, she fought MMA in 2011, winning via armbar in the first. A second MMA fight in 2014 ended the same way. She signed with Legacy FC, but it wasn’t an ideal fit, and she lost a unanimous decision, in 2014.

My last contract with Legacy, they had a hard time finding fights for me,” she said. “I was getting ready for fights, and they cancelled two or three times. After that, I just lost focus.

A friend told me [Evolve] were looking for new instructors and athletes, so I sent a message to [Head Coach] Heath Sims, and they invited me to come for a week’s training. … On my journeys I have visited some other MMA gyms around the world, but this was the first time that I imagined myself moving to one permanently. The training is hard, the instructors are all world champions in something, and the head coach, Heath Sims, has so much experience. I feel like this is the place I was always looking for.

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