Fernando “Tererê” Augusto is a multiple world champion in BJJ at all belt levels. He’s also a coach who helped some of the most exciting fighters today, Andre Galvao, Rubens “Cobrinha” Charles, Michael Langi, Lucas Lepri, and others… to raise their game.
Fernando Terere is one of the most influential grapplers today who developed many techniques and concepts like Leg drag, Torreando pass, etc. Regardless of a lot of wins and world championships wins by Terere a lot of people think that his biggest achievement in Jiu-Jitsu competition is that he became a Black Belt world champion in 2000 at the age of 20.
His time as the top BJJ competitor was pretty short because he had an undiagnosed mental illness and he fell into drug abuse and became homeless. Fortunately, he managed to overcome problems and he came back to normal life but it wasn’t quick as he spent years overcoming everything preventing him from having a normal life.
In 2004 Terere was arrested on a plane to the USA and was jailed there. Soon after in 2005, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. That condition led him to drug addiction and kept him away from Jiu-Jitsu. In 2010 he came back starting a “new life” cleared of everything that affected his life in a negative way, so he started competing again in September of 2012 in Mexico.
Now, in 2020, there’s a movie about his life which will be released in early 2021. It’s called “O Faixa Preta” or “The Black Belt”. The character and life of Terere will be embodied by a very popular Brazilian actor Jonathan Azevedo who’s training with Fernando Terere for the past few weeks.
Here is a video of Jonathan Azevedo and Fernando Terere training:
