While his teammates Felipe Costa and Victor Hugo prepare for ADCC, Rafael Lovato Jr. has made a different call. According to sources, the six-time jiu-jitsu world champion is skipping the world’s most prestigious submission-only event in favor of the BJJ Stars Masters bracket in Brazil, and he has a clear reason why.
For a competitor with Lovato’s resume, the calculus has shifted. At this stage of his career, stepping onto a professional stage means stepping onto one that fits, and for him right now, that is a 16-man masters bracket against peers who have logged the same decades on the mat.
Lovato explained that he no longer wants to take on the physical demands of a two-day bracket against younger athletes without a professional payday.
“No more ADCCs, man,” he said. Later in the same interview, he made his stance on the financial side even clearer: “I’m not competing against anybody in their 20s for free any more. That’s 100%.”
Additionally, Lovato admitted in an interview that he has been looking for a challenge that would reignite his motivation to compete.
“I haven’t had a super fun, inspirational challenge in the game in a while,” Lovato said. “Not that Masters Worlds isn’t fun and all that kind of stuff, but it’s not the professional stage.”
The BJJ Stars invitation caught his attention immediately. Competing in Brazil carries deep personal significance for Lovato, who first traveled there for the World Championships in 1999 at 16 years old.
That trip changed the direction of his life, eventually leading him to drop out of college and move to Brazil to train. The opportunity to compete professionally in the country for the first time carried a weight that ADCC simply could not match at this point in his career.
“This feels like it was almost meant for me,” he said. “Every layer of it is just something that will bring out the best of me.”
Lovato also spoke openly about why the growing investment in masters competition resonates with him. Where younger adult competitors can approach matches conservatively, protecting rankings and career trajectories, masters competitors operate from a different place entirely.
“When you’re that young, maybe the career kind of comes first and the wins and the losses. You feel like they make or break you. Maybe you fight a little extra strategic, you don’t really want to lose, maybe you don’t open up enough,” he explained. “As a master, you’re still out there at that stage because you truly, truly love it. You’re just battling because it’s who you are. The passion, it’s pure.”
That purity, combined with a legitimate professional platform and prize money, is what drew Lovato in. Training alongside men like Victor Hugo and Felipe Costa has kept him sharp, but he is under no illusions about the physical demands of competing at 43 against elite adult grapplers half his age without the framework that makes it worthwhile.
“Whenever I’m at my best, I’m really hard to beat for anybody in the world at any age,” he said. “It’s just not about being at that level every day of camp.”
With his sensei set to be in attendance in Brazil and a bracket full of experienced, dangerous competitors, Lovato has found a competition that gave him the fire he was looking for.
