Roll Call No. 11 — Bernardo Faria: The Over-Under Machine

Roll Call · The 30 Greatest · No. 11

Five world titles built on deep half guard and one unstoppable pass — then he turned the obsession into the sport’s biggest instructional library.

Bernardo Faria won at the highest level with a game so simple, so stubborn, and so effective that opponents knew the plan and still could not stop it. He would pull deep half guard, sweep you, pass with a relentless over-under, and drown you in top pressure until the match was decided. That was it. That was the whole thing. And it took him to the top of the deepest division in the sport.

The crowning achievement came at the 2015 World Championship, where Faria won double gold — the super-heavyweight title and the open-weight absolute in the same tournament, a feat that separates the merely great from the historic. Across his career he stacked multiple world titles along with European and Pan American crowns, and in 2022 he was inducted into the IBJJF Hall of Fame, cementing his place among the defining super-heavyweights of his generation.

What made Faria fascinating was his self-awareness. He was open about not being the most athletic or explosive man in the bracket; instead he out-worked and out-thought people, betting everything on a tiny number of positions that he understood more deeply than anyone alive. It was jiu-jitsu as monomania — and it is exactly why his second career became so influential.

After competing, Faria founded BJJ Fanatics, which grew into the largest instructional platform in the sport — a vast library of video courses from champions across every style and era. In doing so he changed how grapplers everywhere learn, giving hobbyists direct access to the minds of the best competitors on earth. The same obsessive, systematizing brain that beat world champions with two techniques turned out to be perfect for organizing the collective knowledge of the art.

He is a reminder that greatness does not require flash. Faria’s deep half guard and over-under pass are now standard curriculum, taught in gyms that have never heard his rivals’ names, because he proved a truth every honest coach preaches: depth beats breadth. Master a few things completely and you can beat people who dabble in everything.

Ranked on titles, Faria sits comfortably among the modern greats. Ranked on influence — on how many people he taught, directly and through the platform he built — his reach may be wider than almost anyone on this list. The over-under machine kept it simple, and simple, done relentlessly, turned out to be one of the smartest bets in the sport’s history.

Roll Call is The Jiu Jitsu Mindset’s 30-part series on the greatest to ever play the game. Records per IBJJF and public grappling databases.