Tulum blue belt Amira Neme targets the IBJJF No-Gi Worlds

Amira Neme returned to Tulum jiu-jitsu in May 2025 for one class per week. Seventeen months later, she has six gold medals and a world championship she is training for in December.

The medals are on the record. Her profile on the AJP Tour, the Abu Dhabi circuit that ran three of the tournaments she entered this year, lists seven matches, seven wins and three submissions, with gold in every bracket she signed up for.

Two dates now sit before her. On Saturday, October 24, the traveling women's open mat she helps promote reaches Boxing Camp Playa in Playa del Carmen at noon. On December 10, the World IBJJF Jiu-Jitsu No-Gi Championship opens at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and she intends to compete in the blue-belt Master 1 bracket.

She is 32 and Argentine. She has lived in Mexico since 2018, six of those years in Tulum, where her youngest daughter was born. She has three daughters, and all of them practice jiu-jitsu at the same academy she does. Between sessions, she runs a seafood distribution business that supplies restaurants and private chefs, as well as household orders. She is also developing a second line of work as a photographer, focused on sports and events shot in natural light.

A place where motherhood belongs

Neme had been finding her way into the sport for years. She came to it out of curiosity and a desire to play. "I always enjoyed exploring through my body. Moving, climbing trees, contact," she wrote in answers sent to The Tulum Times. In jiu-jitsu she found a particular connection to that sense of play and physical expression.

For a time she trained in stretches, a few months at a time, then stopped. Between the rhythms of family life, the postpartum months and the demands of work, consistency was not always possible. "I was trying to get a personal space back, but I found it hard to find a rhythm I could sustain," she said.

"What matters to us as teachers is that the student always comes back," a friend who teaches in Argentina once told her. That thought stayed with her when she decided to return once more, in May 2025, starting with one class a week.

Her coach at Jiu Jitsu Tulum Mexico, Juan Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz, gave her room to find her own rhythm. "He made me feel that I could get there even if I was late or with my daughters. What mattered was finding a way to be there," she said.

"That openness at the academy made the mat a place where I could bring my motherhood with me," she said. "My training partners and coaches welcome my daughters, help me and make them part of it."

One class became two, then three. With that community behind her, she built the consistency that had been hard to sustain before.

"Jiu-jitsu is not making me a strong woman. It is teaching me to recognize the strength I already have."

Training in balance with family and work

She now trains five to six days a week at Jiu Jitsu Tulum, Mexico, on Paseo la Xel Va. Another two or three sessions go to physical conditioning.

"Each week I do what I can, always looking for balance with the rhythms of family life and work," she said.

What she finds in the sport goes beyond medals. "To practice it, you need a lot of presence. Being aware of your body and the other person's, taking care of yourself and taking care of them," she said. "Jiu-jitsu taught me to recognize my strength, my limits and my ability to solve things under pressure. That is why I say it is a bit my yoga, my meditation."

The last twelve months have been marked by change. "In a year of many personal, family and economic changes, it gave me enjoyment, inner strength and confidence to get through the uncertainty," she said.

Six golds in four months

Neme started competing this year. Her first entry, by her own account, was the Garra Jaguar tournament at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán in Mérida in April, a no-gi event outside the AJP circuit and not listed on her federation profile.

The rest is documented. On June 7 in Barcelona, she took both brackets at the AJP Tour West Europe Regional, winning all four of her matches on points. On July 11 in Cancún, she took both brackets again. On September 26 in Madrid, she won two separate championships on the same day: the gi title at the AJP Tour Europe Continental and the no-gi title at the AJP Madrid International, both by submission.

Six golds between June and September, in her first season of competition.

The rankings followed. In the 2025-2026 AJP season, she sits first in Argentina in two divisions, women's amateur blue no-gi and women's Master 1 blue, tenth in the world in the first of those and twenty-sixth in the second. She is also seventh in the AJP's Spain ranking for women's blue belts. Her AJP brackets this year ran at 70 kilograms, while the IBJJF division she is targeting is capped at 64 kilograms.

During her trips through Spain she combined work, training and competition, and got to know other academies and other ways of practicing. She says the welcome she found in those gyms is one of the most valuable things the sport has given her: in different corners of the world, a mat and a community that take you in.

Potencia reaches Playa del Carmen on October 24

Potencia is a traveling women's open mat that Neme helps promote to strengthen the connections among practitioners from different academies.

"We are usually very few per academy, and we are used to rolling mainly with men," she said.

The gatherings put practitioners from different gyms on the same mat, training alongside bodies, styles, and levels they rarely encounter at home.

Potencia has met in Tulum, Cancún and Ibiza. The next session is Saturday, October 24, at noon at Boxing Camp Playa in Playa del Carmen. It is open to women from every academy and every level, gi and no-gi. The gathering is free and requires no advance registration.

"My intention is to strengthen the bonds between the women who practice in the region, to motivate each other to compete, and to bring more women to the mat," she said.

Seeking support for the road to Las Vegas

The World IBJJF Jiu-Jitsu No-Gi Championship runs December 10 to 12 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, in Halls N3 and N4. Registration closes on November 29.

Neme puts the cost of getting there at 25,000 to 35,000 pesos, covering entry, the federation membership required for entry, flights, ground transport, lodging, food, physical preparation and recovery.

To make the trip possible, she is running a campaign for financial support and product or service contributions through brand partnerships and collaborations. She can be reached at amira.neme@gmail.com and on WhatsApp at +52 998 235 8112.

Between now and the November 29 cutoff, she has the open mat in Playa del Carmen, the coming weeks of preparation, and the money to find. Her approach to all three comes down to one line.

"I do not wait for perfect conditions to pursue my dreams."

Should the region's gyms be doing more to bring women onto the mat, or is a traveling open mat the better place to start? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes .