Rose El Sharouni

Rose-Marie El Sharouni is a Dutch grappler and a jiu-jitsu black belt under Leonardo Vieira, who represents Team Checkmat and the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy Amsterdam (Netherlands) in the sport’s international circuit. Despite spending many of her competitive years splitting her time between a medical career and the mats, El Sharouni still maintained a high rate of success in the sport, earning multiple medals in the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation (IBJJF) and the Abu Dhabi Jiu-Jitsu Pro (AJP) tours, while beating some of the top-ranked athletes on the light-featherweight division.

Rose El Sharouni Jiu-Jitsu

Full Name: Rose-Marie el Sharouni

Nickname: N/A

Lineage: Carlos Gracie > Helio Gracie > Rolls Gracie > Romero Cavalcanti > Leonardo Vieira > Rose-Marie El Sharouni

Main Achievements:

• #1 AJP Ranked European Player (2022)
• 2nd Place IBJJF Pan Championship (2023)
• 2nd Place IBJJF European Open (2022)
• 2nd Place AJP Abu Dhabi World Pro (2021)
• 3rd Place IBJJF World Championship (2021 / 2022)
• 3rd Place IBJJF European Open (2020 / 2023)

Main Achievements (Colored Belts):

• 1st Place IBJJF European Open (2015 blue, 2019 brown)
• 3rd Place IBJJF World Championship (2018 brown)

Favorite Position/Technique: Spider-Guard

Weight Division: Peso Peso Pluma (53.5kg / 118 lbs)

Team/Association: Checkmat

Rose El Sharouni Biography

Rose El Sharouni was born on September 28, 1991, in Heerlen, Netherlands, but soon moved to Utrecht (also in the Netherlands).

Martial arts entered Rose’s life early on, first by way of judo, which she started at the age of 6 and practiced all the way to 12 despite her dislike for the sport. During her pre-teens, El Sharouni found traditional jiu-jitsu, which she favored over judo. For this reason, she shifted her focus toward TJJ.

At 16 Rose joined a Brazilian jiu-jitsu workshop that was being held at her TJJ gym, attending the event out of curiosity. After the session, the young Dutch martial artist realized BJJ was more fun than she expected and decided to pursue more of this novel combat sport, which quickly became a big part of her extracurricular life as she went on to train under the guidance of Mathieu Peters, a camp she maintained all the way to purple belt.

Rose El Sharouni joined a medical school as a blue belt, spending her time between training and studying for the next few years. Later, going through an internship and residency at a hospital while training and competing regularly.

Rose’s hard work led to her black belt promotion from the hands of Leonardo Vieira on 14 July 2019.

Although it was Checkmat‘s team leader, Leo Vieira, who promoted El Sharouni, most of her sports progression was done researching and training with her teammates, Kiren Newadj and Remo Corstjens, who founded the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Academy Amsterdam in 2015 as blue belts.

In 2022 Rose El Sharouni decided to pause her medical career to pursue jiu-jitsu on a full-time schedule, coaching, training, and competing.

The cover photo was taken by Jan Lago.