Alexis Alduncin

Alexis Alduncin was born on November 30, 1992, in Mexico City, Mexico, and his life changed irrevocably before he could walk. At just 9 months old, while taking his first steps in a baby walker in the family kitchen, Alduncin pulled a towel from beneath a champagne bottle in the liquor cabinet. The bottle shattered, sending glass shards into his eye. A prolonged series of surgeries aimed at repairing a detached retina and the surrounding damage ultimately failed, leaving Alduncin with zero visibility in his right eye. From his earliest years, he was forced to adapt to a world without depth perception.

The challenges of growing up visually impaired extended beyond the physical. In a November 2018 interview with BJJ Heroes, Alduncin reflected on the psychological weight of his condition: "What I struggled with the most was not having confidence in myself, especially around other people. Kids can be too honest sometimes and I used to get a lot of questions and stares from people throughout my childhood because my eye looked different. Ultimately this made me a very reserved and introverted person. At the same time, it sort of fueled me to want to prove something to the world."

That drive translated into exceptional academic performance. Alduncin graduated at the head of his class with honors, channeling his competitive spirit into education with the same intensity he would later bring to the mats. On the sporting front, he competed in football (soccer) during his childhood and pursued the sport seriously enough to undergo trial tests for a European club in Spain, though his small frame ultimately cooled the club's interest.

At age 13, increasing pressure in his injured eye required another operation, resulting in part of his eye being replaced with a prosthetic. That surgery, though difficult, would set the course for his future in martial arts in ways he could not have anticipated.

First Steps on the Mat

Alexis Alduncin's path to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was shaped by family influence and geographic circumstance. During his mid-teens, while living in Austin, Texas, his older brother Salvador had taken up jiu-jitsu and would regularly demonstrate techniques and share his enthusiasm whenever the two met. Those informal sessions planted the seed. When Alexis returned to Mexico, he acted on his curiosity and began formal training in June 2009 at age 16, joining a gym under Mario Delgado, a black belt under Renzo Gracie.

The fit was immediate. Alduncin took to jiu-jitsu with total dedication, earning his blue belt in just nine months — a timeline that reflected both his natural aptitude and his relentless work ethic.

The Alliance Experience

Emboldened by his early progress, Alduncin made a bold decision shortly after his blue belt promotion: he traveled to São Paulo, Brazil, to train with Alliance, one of the premier BJJ teams in the world. During his time there, he shared an apartment with elite-level athletes including Bruno Malfacine, Bernardo Faria, and Michael Langhi.

The experience was humbling. The gap between the competition level Alduncin had encountered in Mexico and the standard at Alliance's São Paulo training environment was substantial. After two months, he returned to Mexico to continue his development under Mario Delgado, carrying the lessons of that exposure with him. Rather than discouraging him, the experience served as a precise benchmark — clarifying exactly how far he needed to go and hardening his resolve to close that gap.

Rising Through the Ranks

Years of disciplined development followed. By brown belt, Alduncin had grown into a competitive force on the international stage, medalling in three major IBJJF calendar events — a run that validated the ambitions he had held since his earliest days on the mat. On July 16, 2016, Mario Delgado promoted Alduncin to black belt, formalizing his status as an elite practitioner representing Renzo Gracie Mexico. At black belt, Alduncin built on that momentum, capturing titles at IBJJF and UAEJJF events across North America, Latin America, and beyond.

A Deliberate Strategic Choice

For most athletes, the loss of vision in one eye would represent an insurmountable barrier to high-level combat sports competition. For Alexis Alduncin, it became a defining feature of his competitive identity. Following the surgery that resulted in a prosthetic eye, Alduncin made a deliberate calculation: striking-based disciplines such as boxing and MMA, where visual tracking and depth perception are critical, were incompatible with his condition. Jiu-jitsu, however, was different. As he explained in his 2018 interview: "I didn't need to see my opponent as much as I needed to feel him."

That insight became the philosophical foundation of his entire approach to the sport.

Training Through Touch

Alduncin incorporates blindfolded rolling into his training practice, deliberately removing the visual input that most grapplers rely upon and forcing himself to read an opponent entirely through touch — detecting shifts in weight distribution, pressure, and movement through tactile sensitivity alone. He credits this practice with developing a heightened ability to interpret an opponent's intentions before they fully materialize, a skill that translates directly into his competitive performance.

Results That Speak

Competing in the featherweight division (Pluma, 64 kg / 141.5 lbs) against fully sighted opponents at the black belt level, Alduncin has demonstrated that the absence of depth perception is not a ceiling on what is achievable in grappling. His podium finishes at IBJJF and UAEJJF competitions across multiple continents stand as evidence that the tactile intelligence he has cultivated not only compensates for his visual impairment but, by his own account, enhances his game in ways he may not have developed otherwise. Representing Mexico on the international circuit, Alduncin's story has brought meaningful visibility to the growth of BJJ in his home country — embodying a competitive philosophy built on adaptation, feel, and an unrelenting will to stand out.