Fabricio Andrey Chose Alliance Over Mica's New Team — Mica's New Team Didn't Last 72 Hours

Three years ago, Fabricio Andrey left.

Not with a manifesto. Not with a 14-paragraph Instagram post. He walked out of Melqui Galvao's setup with his wife Brenda Larissa and teammate Luiz Paulo, held a press conference, and signed with Alliance Jiu-Jitsu in August 2023. Done. Clean.

When asked why, Andrey didn't get philosophical. "I felt like I wasn't being valued the way I deserved it," he said. "I think it's about respect."

Melqui Galvao's response, at the time, was oddly touching. "When they didn't even know how to tie their belts and nobody bet anything on them I was there," he said. "When things started to work out I was there once more and now that they are leaving I feel like I accomplished my mission."

He added: "If things go wrong once again and you feel alone without having anyone to turn to just call and I'll be here again."

They didn't call. And at ADCC 2024, Andrey and Galvao ran into each other, hugged, and exchanged compliments. Cordial. Normal. A clean break.

The timeline did not stay clean for long.

The Week BJJ College Died

In late April 2026, Melqui Galvao was arrested on allegations of sexual assault involving at least three victims, one of them reportedly twelve years old. Audio clips circulated purportedly showing him apologizing and offering compensation. The IBJJF and CBJJ responded with permanent bans. BJJ College — the organization behind some of the most decorated no-gi athletes in the world — was finished.

On May 4, his son Mica tried to hold the pieces together.

The 72-Hour Team

Mica Galvao is 22 and one of the best grapplers alive. He didn't choose his circumstances. What he chose on May 4 was to give the athletes around him somewhere to land.

The announcement was carefully worded: BJJ College hadn't collapsed, it had "fulfilled its purpose." A new organization would rise under Mica's leadership: Mika Jiu-Jitsu. Different banner. His name on the door.

"I saw the families, the athletes, everyone needing a place to train," Mica said.

By May 7 — 72 hours later — Mika Jiu-Jitsu was on hold.

"With everything that happened, it became completely unfeasible," Mica said. "Right now, the focus is more on taking care of my family."

Three days from launch to pause. The team existed between a Sunday and a Wednesday. For the athletes who were supposed to find a home under that banner, it evaporated before they could move in.

Why Three Days Matter

In professional sports, there's an unspoken understanding about how institutional collapse plays out. Usually it's slow. Sponsors quietly back away. Athletes explore options. Rumors circulate for weeks before an official announcement. Institutions die in slow motion, often while maintaining the appearance of stability for as long as possible.

Mika Jiu-Jitsu didn't get that luxury. The moment it was announced, the weight of what had happened to BJJ College became impossible to separate from it. Sponsors, media partners, and athletes who might have been willing to work through turbulent times in a normal transition weren't willing to do it under these circumstances. The stain transferred instantly and completely.

What's notable is that Mica actually tried. At 22 years old, watching his father's life and his team's entire structure collapse in real time, he didn't just walk away. He attempted to create continuity for the people who depended on BJJ College. That's not an excuse for the team failing — it's context for why it failed so fast. There was no infrastructure, no buffer of institutional credibility, no goodwill to lean on. Everything had to be rebuilt from zero while operating under conditions of maximum liability and reputational damage.

The athletes involved didn't have months to find new homes. They had hours.

Two Different Departures

Diogo Reis, two-time ADCC champion, found the door when the news broke. His statement was blunt: "The magnitude of the facts makes my continued stay on the team unbearable, as they go completely against my principles."

That's not a man exploring options. That's a man who just told you where his line is. Reis made an immediate, unambiguous decision based on principle. He wasn't waiting to see if Mika could rebuild something. He was gone.

Fabricio Andrey, meanwhile, had already been at Alliance for three years. He didn't need to find a door because he found it in 2023. Not a premonition of anything darker, not a read on something criminal — he felt disrespected, and he left. Alliance was the answer. He'd been there since, through ADCC 2024, through the casual hug with Melqui that demonstrated there were no hard feelings about the departure itself, and into 2026. He was already positioned elsewhere when everything fell apart.

This distinction matters because it shapes how you interpret Andrey's choice. He didn't "choose Alliance over Mica's new team" in the sense of making a last-minute decision. He'd already made that choice three years earlier, for entirely different reasons. He chose Alliance over an organization that no longer valued him the way he believed he deserved. That the organization he left later became embroiled in criminal allegations is a separate issue entirely from why he left in the first place.

The Timeline, Laid Out

• August 2023: Fabricio Andrey, Brenda Larissa, and Luiz Paulo leave Melqui Galvao's setup, sign with Alliance. Reason given: respect, being valued.
• ADCC 2024: Andrey and Melqui meet, hug, part ways again. Clean.
• April 2026: Melqui Galvao arrested. Permanent bans issued by IBJJF and CBJJ. BJJ College ceases to exist as a functioning organization.
• May 4, 2026: Mica Galvao ends BJJ College, launches Mika Jiu-Jitsu as a successor organization.
• May 7, 2026: Mika Jiu-Jitsu goes on hold. "Completely unfeasible."

The sequence reveals something about institutional fragility in BJJ. One person's criminal charges don't just remove that person from the sport — they dismantle everything he built. Every athlete, coach, facility, and partnership connected to that structure has to immediately recalculate their position. There's no runway. There's no transition period. There's the announcement and then there's the hole where your team used to be.

The Collateral Damage

When Andrey left Alliance in August 2023 and signed with Alliance, he was already an established elite athlete with options. When Diogo Reis walked away from BJJ College in April 2026, he was a two-time ADCC champion with obvious landing spots. Both men had leverage and profile.

What gets less coverage is what happened to the mid-tier athletes and the younger grapplers who built their entire BJJ identity inside BJJ College's structure. The purple belts and brown belts who trained there because it was where the best training was available. The teenagers with regional promise who were being developed in that system. The coaches and support staff who depended on that organization for their income. The families who had invested years in being part of that team's ecosystem.

Those people didn't have the luxury of seamless transitions to established powerhouse teams. They had to scramble. Some found homes at other gyms. Some moved up to different states or countries to chase opportunities. Some probably stepped back from the sport entirely because the infrastructure they depended on disappeared overnight.

This is the real casualty of organizational collapse in jiu-jitsu: not the elite athletes who will be fine regardless, but the people below them whose careers were built on proximity to excellence and now have to rebuild from scratch.

What Alliance Represented

When Andrey chose Alliance in 2023, he was choosing continuity, stability, and — importantly — a structure that valued him differently than his previous organization. Alliance wasn't revolutionary. It wasn't flashier or more famous than BJJ College. It was just different. It was a place where, from Andrey's perspective, respect and value were more tangible.

Three years later, that choice looks like the obvious one. Not because of anything that happened in April 2026, but because Andrey made a decision based on how he was being treated in the present moment, not on assumptions about the future. He left when he felt undervalued. Alliance provided an alternative. The rest followed from that.

The Awkward Reality for Mica

Mica Galvao doesn't owe anyone a functioning jiu-jitsu team right now. He's 22, his father is facing criminal charges, and attempting to build something stable in the middle of that was always going to hit a structural wall that no amount of effort could overcome. That he tried, and explicitly named the stranded athletes as his reason for attempting the launch, says something about him as a person. It demonstrates that he understood his responsibility to the people who had trusted his organization.

But understanding your responsibility and being able to execute on it are different things. The reputational damage was too severe. The institutional credibility was too depleted. Sponsors and broadcast partners and media outlets that had worked with BJJ College couldn't simply rebrand and pretend nothing happened. The athletes themselves had to make decisions about whether they wanted to be publicly associated with anything emerging from that organization, even under new leadership. Most couldn't.

The Broader Pattern

This situation is an extreme version of something that happens more often in BJJ than people acknowledge: the sudden institutional collapse that leaves mid-tier athletes scrambling. It doesn't always involve criminal allegations. Sometimes it's just poor management, financial mismanagement, or interpersonal breakdown. Sometimes it's the retirement or death of a key figure. But the pattern is consistent: small and mid-tier teams dissolve with little warning, and the athletes within them have to rapidly find new homes or new careers.

The professional structure of BJJ means that success concentrates at the top. The elite athletes find homes easily. Everyone else has to compete for positions at the remaining viable teams. When one of those remaining viable teams disappears, the scramble intensifies.

Andrey's decision to leave in 2023, years before any crisis, looks like it was made with good instincts about what actually matters: being valued, being respected, having a coach who treats you as someone worth investing in. Those factors seem to correlate with longevity and stability more than size, fame, or track record.

Three Years Later

Fabricio Andrey is still at Alliance. He trained there during the ADCC 2024 cycle when he ran into Melqui and exchanged pleasantries. He's probably training there right now, in 2026, while former BJJ College athletes are still figuring out where they belong. Mika Jiu-Jitsu lasted 72 hours. Alliance is still there.

Andrey didn't predict the future. He just responded to what he was experiencing in August 2023: a lack of respect from his organization. He left. He found somewhere else. That somewhere else turned out to still be standing years later, even after the organization he'd left had imploded completely.

Turns out "it's about respect" ages better than almost anything else in jiu-jitsu.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

• Fabricio Andrey Talks Why He Left Melqui Galvao Team: 'It's About Respect'
• Fabricio Andrey, Brenda Larissa, Luiz Paulo Join Alliance Jiu Jitsu Team
• Mica Galvao Ends BJJ College, Launches New Team Under His Leadership
• After Announcing His New Team Mika Jiu-Jitsu, Mica Galvao Reveals Why the Project Is Now on Hold
• Melqui Galvao Arrest, Mica Galvao Announces New Team, ADCC Champ Diogo Reis Leaves