Elisabeth Clay of Ares is widely regarded as one of the best young female competitors in the sport. After back to back World No-Gi double gold medal performances at purple and brown belt, she was promoted to black belt by Osvaldo “Queixinho” Moizinho and Samir Chantre in late 2020. It didn’t take long for Elisabeth to start having great results at black belt. At the 2021 Worlds No-Gi, less than a year after her promotion, she won her first World title, finishing her opponent in the final with a guillotine choke.

This past October, Elisabeth competed at the Pan No-Gi Jiu-Jitsu Championships, putting on one of the best performances of her career. For the second year in a row, Elisabeth won Pan No-Gi gold with all submissions. “It was great to be able to win, especially in such a dominant way and to do it again like I did last year. Hopefully I’ll be able to do the same thing at No-Gi Worlds.”

With World and Pan No-Gi gold medals already on her black belt resume, Elisabeth is now gearing up for a run at her second black belt World No-Gi title. She commented on her training and mindset heading into the event. “I feel the same as I always do. I’m always training and trying to get better and fix any mistakes and just get better overall.” With great coaching and highly accomplished competitors at Ares, she’ll be sure to come to the event well prepared for another gold medal run.

Last year Elisabeth took gold at medium-heavyweight. This year she’s dropped down to the middleweight division. “Honestly it wasn’t even a thing I wanted to do. It was more so that I just started losing weight and was walking around at middleweight. At Brazilian Nationals this year I fought medium-heavy but I actually weighed in at middleweight. So after that I decided I had to move down as it no longer made sense to fight medium-heavy when I was walking around so much lighter.”

Though Elisabeth is lighter than most of her opponents in the open class, she regularly competes in absolute divisions at major tournaments. “I like the extra challenge and it’s just something I’ve always done. It can be a little harder to do at black belt because it’s before the weight class so it can affect the weight class, but it’s something I still really like to do. And I’m definitely going to be competing open weight at No-Gi Worlds.”

The IBJJF World No-Gi Jiu-Jitsu Championships start on Thursday December 8th and run through Sunday the 11th. Watch all matches live on FloGrappling.