On a stacked Tezos WNO card of decorated grapplers, one name stands out. It's a last name, and it's shared by two competitors. Rocha. 

Stepping onto the same stage where their famed father, Vagner Rocha, has taken on some of the greatest names in the sport, Jasmine and Achilles are prepared to scrap hard, shine brightly, and stake their claim to greatness of their own. 

On Aug. 10 in Austin, Tx, both Jasmine and Achilles Rocha will take on the biggest opportunities of their careers so far. Achilles will make his debut on the undercard against B-Team’s JB Bechtloff, while Jasmine will face two-time IBJJF World Champion, 2022 ADCC Champion, and reigning WNO flyweight champ Ffion Davies for the WNO 125-lb women’s title. 

With a father like Vagner Rocha, one might assume that both Jasmine and Achilles were fully primed for a career in competitive jiu-jitsu since the first day they stepped onto a mat. Not so. Their professional pursuits in the sport, let alone their promise or persistence in the sport were far from guaranteed. But over time, the two developed a love of jiu-jitsu, confidence in their grappling skills, and ambitions to match them. Jasmine now hopes to become the next “Lady GOAT,” and Achilles aims at “becoming a legend.” 

Ahead of the milestone of Tezos WNO 19, this is a story of two siblings' rise in “the family business” of professional grappling, of continuous evolution, and what it means to embrace a family identity while building one’s own.

Get your tickets for Tezos WNO 19: Meregali vs Duarte presented live by Fat Tire here!

Jasmine and Achilles’ Early Days: Jiu-Jitsu as a Basic Education, Not a Professional Expectation

The only jiu-jitsu expectation Vagner Rocha had for Jasmine and Achilles was that they train. Period. 

Jasmine started training at five years old, Achilles at four years old. Though he had his children on the mats at a very early age, Vagner’s expectations for them did not extend beyond them showing up to train. There was no pressure to compete, no lofty ambitions for his children's professional career. They just had to train. That was it. 

Like getting an education, training was a basic requirement in the Rocha household, and even if they didn’t enjoy traininsitting out was not an option. “Both my kids hated jiu-jitsu until they were like thirteen years old," Vagner says. "And I always told them, ‘It’s like school. You’ve got to go to school. You don’t have to be good, but you’ve got to go to school.’” 

“My dad always made me train,” Jasmine recalls. “Honestly, I felt like I just didn't like it, and my dad was always like, ‘Training isn't an option. Training is a lifestyle.”

Vagner's children say their father never encumbered them with expectations related to their abilities or performance. 

“He didn't care if I was good or if I won," Jasmine says. "Competing was never a mandatory thing in my household. It was just: you just had to show up and you had to train. Training wasn't about getting good at jiu jitsu. It was about training your mind and getting tough.”

Turning Points: When Jasmine & Achilles Considered Becoming Serious About Jiu-Jitsu

It wasn’t until they were young teens that Jasmine and Achilles’ attitudes towards jiu-jitsu started to change. In the aftermath of two tournaments, jiu-jitsu turned from something that was table stakes into something they enjoyed and wanted to take more seriously. 

For Jasmine, the shift occurred after an annual in-house tournament at the family’s academy, Vagner Rocha Martial Arts. Jasmine was twelve and typically got beaten up in the training room by boys close to her age. In previous instances of the in-house tournament, she didn’t come close to placing. 

That year, things would be different. 

“My dad got me a pink gi and said, ‘You gotta channel the pink gi!’”

The pink gi was a nod to a shared memory from a local Newbreed competition. Jasmine had underestimated her opponent for wearing a pink gi: “I thought ‘this will be cake, this is going to be light work. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life–she subbed me so fast!” 

At the in-house competition, Jasmine wore the pink gi her father had gifted her. “I put the gi on and it gave me some...unfound confidence? I don't know. Jiu-jitsu powers? Whatever it was, I just went out there and I subbed every single one of the boys. Every single one of them. Ever since then, I was like, ’You know what? I think I'm good at this. I'm gonna be good at this.’”

Achilles remembers the shift happening for him after competing at Pan Kids. 

“Ever since I was in diapers, I was running around the mat, but I only really started enjoying jiu-jitsu after I understood it," Achilles says. "[At Pan Kids] everything just clicked a little bit, positions going together.” Achilles took third at Pan Kids in 2019 and won it in 2021. In 2022, his first year at Blue Belt, Achilles took double gold at both No-Gi Pans and No-Gi Worlds at Juvenile 1.

His father promoted him to purple belt on the podium after No-Gi Worlds.

ADCC Trials: Vagner’s Glimpse at Jasmine & Achilles’ Pro Potential

For Vagner, the belief in his children’s potential in the sport solidified when Jasmine and Achilles were fifteen years old and competed in their very first ADCC Trials.

In 2017, Jasmine defeated Lila Smadja, one of Eddie Bravo’s top competitors, in the first round before losing by submission to Trials runner-up, Nikki Sullivan, in the second round. Vagner, who won the 2017 ADCC Trials for the -77kg division, beams when remembering Jasmine’s first match at Trials. 

Right after Jasmine won her match, Vagner got called to compete. 

“They called my name immediately after her name to fight someone else on the same mat. And I was so hyped. I remember just coming in and having one of my favorite matches. I have a huge highlight reel on somebody where I foot sweep the guy, pass, take his back, and choke him and it was really, really fast. The energy of her fighting and doing well got me really hyped. That was one of the most fun memories of the tournament.” 

In Vagner’s eyes, the 2017 Trials also serve as yardstick for measuring Jasmine’s growth as a grappler. At the 2022 West Coast Trials, in which Jasmine took second, Jasmine rematched Nikki Sullivan in the Round of 16. This time, she submitted Sullivan. “It was very cool that she lost to this girl and then she eventually beat her. It was a good sign of her progression and her leveling up,” Vagner says.  

In 2021, then 15-year old Achilles made it to the round of sixteen at the East Coast Trials in the -88kg division, winning three matches — two by submission and one by points against 3x D1 All-American wrestler, Sonny Yohn. Achilles lost to Jacob Couch in the round of 16. 

Achilles’ performance at the 2021 ADCC East Coast Trials showed Vagner that Achilles was more than a talented or well-trained athlete. He was an athlete with creativity and “Fight IQ” that was advanced for his age. 

“I’ve watched him have these matches where he makes these really cool, calculated decisions between submitting and scoring that make me very proud of his style, Vagner says. "He’s really fast and agile, and in the moment he does these things that you’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t see that, I couldn’t have done that.’ Those are the moments that blow my mind and I’m like, ‘All right. He’s gonna be special.’” 

Defining the Relationship: The Rochas’ Unique Family Challenges in Training and Coaching

Typical of the lifestyle of most full-time grapplers, Achilles’ and Jasmine’s lifestyle is not without its challenges. They have to balance training alongside gym management and teaching. They put in hours of strength and conditioning work. They travel for high-quality cross-training. They monitor their nutrition and their presence on social media.

The most unique challenge the siblings have is managing their relationships with Vagner — and vice versa. The Rochas must navigate dynamics that most other competitors do not have to face. Vagner is their father, but he is also their coach, teacher, and manager. Achilles and Jasmine are his son and daughter, but they are also his athletes, students, and employees. 

Making these complex dynamics work is a matter of strong communication and identifying “who’s talking.” 

“Sometimes I'm talking and I’ll ask, ‘Who's talking to me right now? Is this Coach Vagner? Is this dad or is this boss?’” Jasmine says. "It’s still hard to manage sometimes. Sometimes, I'll be training, he'll be telling me something. I'm like, ‘Who's talking? Coach or Dad? Who's in my ear right now?’ So that takes both of us to realize where we are, what's happening, and who's talking to me right now.”

Vagner acknowledges how challenging this can be for him, too. 

“It’s a hard task. I tell them like, ‘Hey, this is not Coach. This is Dad.’ ‘This is not Coach. This is Boss.’ I try to keep that as plain in sight as possible, and I try to explain to them why I’m telling them this, the purpose behind what I’m explaining for them. It isn’t easy working with someone, training with someone, living with someone, and having to be in these environments together all the time. Luckily, I have two blessed children that really pay attention and they love jiu-jitsu.”

Creativity, Uniqueness, and More: What Set Jasmine & Achilles Apart

According to Vagner, “time, age, and experience” are what set Jasmine apart from her peers in the 125-135-lb divisions. Jasmine shares her father’s opinion, noting that most of the heavy-hitters at 125 are heading into their thirties while she’s only twenty-one, with significant mat time under her belt and time on her side.  

In addition to time, age, and experience, Jasmine believes her style and game differentiate her from the likes of her competition in athletes like Tammi Musumeci, Bianca Basilio, and her next opponent, Ffion Davies.

“I'm not just a standard guard player, but I can wrestle. I'm not just a standard wrestler — I like to counter-wrestle. I'm different, so I'm definitely a problem for everybody else, Jasmine says.”

Speaking specifically about Davies’ style and how hers differs, Jasmine says, “Ffion’s a square fighter. All her matches look the same to me honestly. I think that in every match that I have, I do something different. Whether it's a smother choke, or an arm lock, or a Mir lock, or a triangle, or a kimura, I'm always changing it up. I'm gonna grab whatever I see, and I see things a little differently: I'll see a submission there that nobody else does.”

Remembering Jasmine’s Tezos WNO debut against Amanda Bruse, Vagner reveals another characteristic that distinguishes Jasmine, a “second and third gear that most people don’t have.” 

“She started off a little slow, weathering the storm, but then she just turned up, turned the switch on and said, ‘Okay, now it’s my time,’ That’s her. She just knows how to do that.”

“I'm definitely offensively creative,” Jasmine says. “I’m not just, like, getting into positions and holding people. I create opportunities with my creativity and it leaves people lost. That’s what we're gonna see on Aug. 10.”

Jasmine speaks confidently when talking about her matchup against an opponent of Davies' caliber. 

“I look at everybody the same. Whether it’s the first match of an ADCC Open or the final match of ADCC Trials, I'm gonna bring the same intensity. It doesn't matter who you are: you're gonna get this smoke. My job is to go out there and give all I have, and their job is to show up and give me what they’ve got.”

Achilles, though younger than Jasmine, possesses similar promise in the eyes of his father. “He’s an incredible athlete, Vagner says. "He’s going to be one of those people who will change the playing field of jiu-jitsu when people get to see him compete at his fullest potential.” 

Achilles has already proven his ability to hang with–and submit–fully-grown men in his previous showings at the ADCC Trials. In his upcoming match against B-Team’s JB Bechtloff, Achilles says he expects to wrestle and to watch out for the legs, mindful of Bechtloff’s experience training with Craig Jones. 

“He looks positionally-sound everywhere, but I just don’t think he’ll be ready,” Achilles says. 

Aside from planning to push the pace, Achilles said he believes his unique style will challenge Bechtloff in a novel way. 

“My style is unpredictable. That’s the base of everything. You don’t expect anything. To be honest, I don’t always expect the stuff I do. It just happens.” 

“He’s not there yet, but he will be there,” Vagner says of Achilles’ maturity as a fighter. “And when he gets there it’s going to be a handful for the whole world.”

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Jasmine’s & Achilles’ Ambitions, Goals, and Evolution 

True to her sense of identity as a game competitor, Jasmine has big goals and a killer drive to win. Next up after winning at Tezos WNO, she hopes, is ADCC–and not just ADCC 2024, but for as many as she can possibly do.

“After I submit Fifi, I'm hoping that Mo will give me my invite [to ADCC 2024]. I want my invite after this match. Maybe I won't have to do any of the Trials. I don't know though. I might even just go through them for fun. My goals are going to ADCC 2024, then ADCC 2026, and every ADCC after that. I just want to win. I want to win it all, you know, as many times as I can. I want to set the record. I want to prove that I’m the best. That’s it.”

Reflecting on her own evolution since her first ADCC Trials in 2017, she says, “I was a kid. I just turned 15. I didn’t know left from right! I'm still young, you know, but I'm 21 now. I think that my career evolution has been a lot of my mental game. I've always had good jiu-jitsu, I've always understood it well, but I feel like a lot of it was like a mental battle for me to actually get to where I am. Until you have self-confidence, until you get through what you're fighting mentally, you can't get anywhere physically. The past two, maybe three years, I've been striving on that. And it all started coming together, throughout the years, building up.” 

Acknowledging how far she's come, Jasmine believes, “2017 me and 2023 me are two different people. Honestly, I've watched fights from 2021 and I'm like, ‘I sucked.’ From even a year and a half, two years ago, there's just constant evolution. That's it. You just have to keep growing”.

“She progresses monthly, weekly; I see things in her change all the time,” Vagner says. “She’s very focused, she shows up, she gives her best. She has her moments of clarity and moments of doubt, her moments of up and down, but she’s consistent. Her progress is very gradual, but she’s consistently getting better and that’s been the secret to why she’s been making her way through waves of people and getting to the top.”

For Achilles, his near term goal is certain. He has a reminder of it on the background of his phone. It's the promotional poster for the first ADCC North American Trials in October 2023. 

“That was my initial goal before I even heard about that opportunity of getting the Who’s Number One match. That's been my goal since this year started.”

In the future, Achilles sees himself getting in the cage and pursuing MMA, and can already be seen practicing with his father. Vagner, a UFC veteran with a 14-4 professional record, is just as well-equipped to prepare his children for the realities of a career in MMA as for a professional career in submission grappling. 

“People push Jasmine all the time into the conversation [of pursuing MMA],” Vagner says, but Jasmine says she's on the fence about it. Achilles, however, has already put his mind to it.  “One day,” Achilles says. “I want to win a couple big world titles first and then move into MMA.”

Like his sister, Achilles has ambitions that extend beyond winning a championship and being at the top of the game – he’s looking to become among the best of all time. 

“I wouldn't be in it if I wouldn't want to be remembered as a legend one day.”

More than medals or outcomes, Vagner says he cares about Achilles and Jasmine staying consistent in following their dreams and giving their best. 

“Winning and losing doesn’t make or change people," he says. "I’ve lost a ton of times, and I’ve won a ton of times. The goal is to keep getting better and keep climbing to get whatever it is they decide they want. For their age, 16 and 21, I am very proud of where they are in their minds and the things that they’re doing. I just want them to stay focused and keep pursuing the straight line that’s in front of them.”

What does it mean to be a Rocha? Everything and Nothing

It can be hard to ignore that, as Rochas, Achilles and Jasmine have a last name with a reputation that precedes them. 

Vagner is an accomplished grappler as a three-time ADCC veteran. At 41 years old, he is still grappling professionally, and the course of his professional career has crossed generations of fighters. In the last few years, he’s faced rising stars such as Pedro Marinho, Giancarlo Bodoni, and Ronaldo Junior, but over the last decade, he’s faced almost every major competitor in the no-gi game: Romulo Barral, JT Torres, Eddie Cummings, Garry Tonon, Craig Jones, and Gordon Ryan, to name a few.

While a resume like Vagner’s is a tough one to replicate and a tough act to follow, Jasmine and Achilles do not see their father’s career — or their last name — as an adverse source of pressure or expectation when considering their own careers. Inside their house, the last name is a source of competitiveness and standard of character to be defended. 

“It's a big thing to be pushing that Rocha name around, but only in the house. Everywhere else, it doesn't really matter,” Vagner says.

Vagner’s father, who lives with the family, is the one setting the bar for what it means to be a Rocha. “He's a hardcore, old school, tough individual, Vagner says. "He's the most competitive out of anybody in the family. It's probably where we all got it from.”

Off the mats, the Rochas will compete aggressively over just about anything: board games, corn hole, bowling. 

According to Vagner, it’s not purely competing for the sake of competing – it’s also a lesson in the importance of giving your all.

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“We're always competing at something and trying to beat each other. It's hard, but it helps you drive that edge. That's where I've learned to teach them how to be competitive, and then make them understand that it's okay to lose sometimes. You're gonna lose–who doesn't lose, you know? If you don’t give it your all, losing is only a consequence of not trying your hardest. If you try your hardest and you lose, it's okay. But if you don't try your hardest and you lose, then that's really your fault. That's the theory that I tried to put in their minds: that it's only okay to lose if you gave it your all.”

Even in the non-game contexts, Vagner’s father sets the bar for toughness and grit, but with his moments of humor. 

Jasmine recounts during her WNO camp:

“A couple hours ago, I’m trying to get into an ice bath, and my grandfather was like: ‘What are you, weak? What kind of Rocha are you?’ I’m like ‘Dude, you’re like 60 years old. Leave me alone, man!’ And my brother is just standing there cracking up.”

As important as the Rocha name is inside the house, on the mats, a name is just a name. 

“I used to feel like I had to own up to it, like I had to stand out and show up,” Jasmine says. “Now, I don't feel that much pressure to own up to my last name. The only person I'm trying to prove is to myself. What everybody else does, what my brother does with his name, that's everybody else's own path. I'm just creating my own path.”

Achilles shares his sister’s sentiment: “Family means a lot, but I gotta write my own name. I can't rely on my dad's name just because we have the same last name. I still have to prove to everybody else that I deserve to be where I am.”

Tezos WNO 19 is set to be the next of many opportunities for Jasmine and Achilles to carve their own paths and make names for themselves in the world of professional grappling. Both say they're eager and excited to showcase their jiu-jitsu heading into their matches next week.

“It’s gonna be entertaining, a lot of action,” Achilles says of his own matchup, and of his sister’s matchup, he says, “I think [Jasmine] is going to shock a lot of people.”

“I think it should be the main event, honestly. It’s gonna be fireworks. I'm game and Ffion is game, so it's gonna be a war," Jasmine predicts. "The crowd is gonna ask for an encore, and there will have to be a title defense no matter what. It’s just a matter of who's defending it.”