With 34 competitors registered, the Featherweight division was the second-largest brown belt division at the 2022 IBJJF No-Gi World Championships. Art Of Jiu-Jitsu’s Zach Kaina worked his way through the division with five matches showing both his tenacity and technical prowess.

In the qualifying rounds, Kaina won his first match 2-0, holding off a last-ditch offense from Jacob Cisneros, who tried to sink in the hooks and choke Kaina from turtle in the final moments of their match. His second match was a more decisive victory, as Kaina controlled the pace and submitted Manuel Zuazua via triangle within the first three minutes. 

In the final rounds, Kaina edged out both of his opponents with last-minute grit and determination. In the semis, Dream Art’s Marco Brito was ahead in the waning minutes of the match, leading 2-0 after scrambling to the top position off of a leg entanglement. Kaina’s (controversially scored) takedown in the last thirty seconds, combined with advantages earlier in the match and penalties for Brito, enabled Kaina to come out with the win. 

In the finals, Kaina battled with Jose Flores, which he won via decision. Both competitors racked up two advantages, but Kaina’s advantages,earned from armbar and kneebar attempts, outweighed those of Flores, who scored off a back take attempt and standing up from a double guard pull.

However, the most noteworthy match in Kaina’s gold-medal run was his third match, the quarterfinal in which he defeated Eduardo "Dudu" Granzotto. Prior to No-Gi Worlds, Kaina and Dudu had already faced three times in the last four months — the Santa Cruz Open in August, No-Gi Pans in October, and the IBJJF Grand Prix in November – with Dudu holding a 3-0 record over Kaina. At both No-Gi Pans and at the Grand Prix, Dudu’s pacing, passing, and pressure on top, along with scrappy, well-timed escapes, earned him the wins over Kaina’s relentless and numerous submission attempts from open guard. In their quarterfinals of No-Gi Worlds, however, Kaina left no room for Granzotto to escape; Kaina found an inside heel hook just under three minutes into their match after repeated, increasingly-successful attempts to invert and get underneath Dudu to attack his legs. 

After three bronze-medal finishes at brown belt at Pans 2021, Worlds 2022, and No-Gi Pans 2022, Kaina’s win at No-Gi Worlds is a gilded feather in his cap, assuring he will be a name to watch in the featherweight division in 2023. Newly promoted to black belt on the podium by Gui Mendes, Kaina’s biggest challenges are ahead of him as he enters black belt featherweight division filled with hungry rookies and decorated competitors alike: Daniel Sathler, Fabricio Andrey, and Isaac Doederlein, to name a few.

Kaina’s promotion to black belt also rounds out Art of Jiu-Jitsu’s stable of black belt competitors at the lighter weight classes ahead of the 2023 season. In the last two years, AOJ has been most dominant in the men’s lightweight and middleweight divisions thanks to consistently-stellar performances from Jonatha Alves and Tainan Dalpra. With a roster that includes 2022 World Champion Thalison Soares, Kaina, and the newly-promoted Niwa Brothers (promoted on the podium after closing out the brown belt light-featherweight division at No-Gi Worlds), AOJ can now take aim at the Rooster, Light-Feather, and Featherweight titles in the years to come. 

The 2022 brown belt featherweight no-gi world champion, Kaina has come a long way since the last time he won No-Gi Worlds–as a juvenile blue belt back in 2018. His win at No-Gi Worlds truly punctuates his colored belt career, ends it on a hard-fought high note, and prepares him well to turn the page ahead of a challenging and promising black belt career.