Margot Ciccarelli

Margot Ciccarelli is a jiu-jitsu black belt under Murilo Santana who worked extensively with other coaches such as Rodrigo Caporal, Jude Samuel, and Guilherme Mendes. Ciccarelli gained notoriety early in her career not only due to her extensive medal tally, but also thanks to her innovative jiu-jitsu style, heavily reliant on positions such as the Berimbolo, Crab-Ride, Lapel-Guard(s), Leg-Drag, and other more recent technical advancements. Her dedication and study of body movement and spatial awareness have also led Margo to co-create Jitz-Jamming, an art form closely connected to her grappling background (more info on that here).

Margot Ciccarelli Jiu-Jitsu

Full Name: Margot Ciccarelli

Nickname: Mars – short for Margot. Ciccarelli also goes by “Nomadic Mars” on social media. The athlete explained the name by saying: “I was born in London, UK, and based there until age 19, after which, I was traveling and living between the UK, Hong Kong, and the US, first California and now New York. These three countries are my home so I often think of myself as a nomad, especially since I hold an Italian passport—hence, my username, “the Nomadic Mars.”

Lineage: Carlos Gracie > Helio Gracie > Rickson Gracie > Marcelo Behring > Mario Yamasaki > Murilo Santana > Margot Ciccarelli

Main Achievements:

• 1st Place IBJJF Charleston Summer Open (2021*)
• 2nd Place IBJJF Pan Championship (2021)
• 2nd Place AJP Abu Dhabi World Pro (2021)
• 3rd Place IBJJF World Championship (2021)
• 3rd Place AJP South American Continental Pro (2021)
• 3rd Place AJP Grand Slam, MIA (2021)

* Absolute
** Weight and Absolute

Main Achievements (Colored Belts):

• 1st Place IBJJF World Championship (2018 / 2019 purple)
• 1st Place IBJJF World Championship NoGi (2019 brown)
• 1st Place AJP Abu Dhabi World Pro (2018 & 2019 purple)
• 1st Place IBJJF European Open (2017 / 2018 purple, 2020 brown)
• 1st Place IBJJF Pan Championship NoGi (2021, brown)
• 1st Place IBJJF American Nationals (2020 brown)
• 1st Place IBJJF American National NoGi (2020 brown)
• 1st Place IBJJF Asian Open (2016 / 2017 / 2018 purple)
• 1st Place IBJJF Pan Pacific Championship (2016 purple)
• 1st Place AJP Grand Slam, TYO (2018 purple)
• 2nd Place UAEJJF Grand Slam, LA (2019 brown + black)
• 2nd Place IBJJF World Championship NoGi (2017 purple)
• 2nd Place IBJJF Pan Championship (2016 purple)
• 3rd Place UAEJJF Abu Dhabi World Pro (2020 brown + black)

Favorite Position/Technique: Modern Guard(s)

Weight Division: Peso Leve (64 kg / 141.5 lbs)

Team/Association: Unity JJ

Margot Ciccarelli Biography

Margot Ciccarelli was born on November 17, 1993, in London, England, United Kingdom, where she lived up until her 19th birthday.

Drawn to martial arts from an early age, Margot started practicing Wushu at the age of 6, then progressing into Chinese kickboxing and Wing Chun Kungfu during her teenage years. Although these are well-known combat systems, Ciccarelli’s early intentions in these activities were exclusively for introspective reasons as explained by the Londoner to BJJ Heroes in July 2021:

“I did not see these [Chinese] arts as competitive; my focus was on self-growth. I was in love with the process of doing the work to get better—to know and understand myself more deeply. I have also always been fascinated with movement and body control, so each art and sport that I immersed myself in became a new lens of how to perceive the world. Today, even though I am a competitive athlete, it’s still so important to me to have overall aesthetic movement—to win with beautiful, superior movement quality and not just win for winning’s sake.”

During her mid-teens, Ciccarelli gained an interest in bodybuilding. Although drawn to the sport from a cosmetic perspective, she opted to pursue powerlifting instead, keeping true to her long-term goals of improving movement and functional strength. It was while embedded into gym culture that Margot discovered jiu-jitsu, through a training partner who was already a student of grappling.

Margot was nearly 19YO when she took her first jiu-jitsu class at the Mill Hill BJJ club in North London with Nick Brooks, Daniel Strauss, and Oliver Geddes. The experience only lasted a couple of weeks as Ciccarelli left London for a work placement in Maui, Hawaii soon after, but the love for jiu-jitsu had grown roots already. She never stopped training from that moment forward.

While progressing in jiu-jitsu Margot immersed herself in a variety of movement-based activities, working with professional coaches in-house and hip hop dancing as well as circus skills, martial arts, and more. Ciccarelli’s movement research, and friendship with the former professional contemporary dancer Stephanie Lee, led to Jitz Jamming, an creative art form deeply rooted in jiu-jitsu movement developed by both. A subject BJJ Heroes covered in 2018.

Nomadic by nature, Margot rarely spent lengthy amounts of time in one place during her journey to black belt. From London to Hong Kong, to the United States, Ciccarelli traveled many miles, often. As a result, her coaching and promotions came from an array of instructors. Rodrigo Caporal (Atos Hong Kong) promoted Margot to blue belt, Jude Samuel (Inglorious Grapplers, London) to purple belt, and lastly Murilo Santana (Unity Jiu-Jitsu, New York) with the brown and, in May 2021, the black belt rank.