Bianca Basilio. Photo by Eduardo Ferreira
Bianca Basilio has had success at every belt. But it was this year, at the brown, that she reached the zenith or her career, leading to her being pointed to as one of the big new promises in BJJ. In 2016, Bia won the Brazil Nationals, the Pan and the Worlds, resulting in her promotion to the black belt toward the end of the year by the hands of her teachers, Caio and Diego Almeida.
But the journey to the black belt has not been an easy one. Basilio first began training through a social project in the back of her teacher’s house. Talking to Graciemag, she went over all the suffering she had to overcome before reaching this new stage in her life.
“In these nine years I’ve been training, I’ve seen many people leaving their jobs and fighting with their families due to dropping everything to live off of BJJ,” she told us. “But that would last a year, and those people ended up taking it back and quitting BJJ. I realized that this life is for a selected few, because few want to pay the price needed to conquer something in life. Many people see only the good things, but few see the day-to-day — how much I strive to get where I’ve gotten, how much I train every day… Many times, I had to eat a rancid lunch, to train in fasting; I had to swallow my tears when I couldn’t even stand to grip the gi due to exhaustion… Truth is, there is no glory without pain. God has always been behind everything in my life, and without him I would be nothing, because he put my masters Caio and Diogo Almeida in my path.”
Basilio knows the suffering is not over. In order to have success among the BJJ elite, she will have to take on the toughest black-belts on the planet:
“Now I will train double, because I know I will face many experienced girls. I will keep putting God before everything in my life, always giving my best and fighting with plenty of joy and love. I hope to fare well in this new phase. I’m fine physically, psychologically, good with my faith and well fed. Now I just have to keep training hard and with focus. Rest assured I will give it my best, for the honor and glory of God.”
