Fernando Yamasaki was born on August 9, 1967, in São Paulo, Brazil, into a family whose martial arts lineage runs several generations deep. The foundation of that legacy was laid by Seiti Yamasaki, who passed his knowledge to his sons Shigeru and Shigueto Yamasaki. The brothers settled in São Paulo, where they studied judo under Ryuzo Ogawa — a figure who, according to Grappling.com as cited in Jiu-Jitsu Style (Issue 22, 2014), co-founded a school alongside Mitsuyo Maeda in 1938. Both Shigeru and Shigueto went on to teach judo, cementing the Yamasaki name as a fixture in Brazilian martial arts.

Fernando's father, judo Grand Master Shigeru Yamasaki, introduced him to the martial arts at the age of three. He trained alongside his older brother Mario Yamasaki, and both earned their judo black belts at 16. Fernando claimed his first state judo championship in 1979 and formalized his black belt in 1983. The family's competitive reach extended to the Olympic stage: Fernando's cousin Shigueto Yamasaki Jr. competed as a judoka at the 1992 Olympic Games, a testament to the extraordinary depth of athletic talent the Yamasaki name carried into that era. For Fernando and Mario, however, their father's and uncle's judo tradition would serve as the launchpad for a far broader contribution — one that would help define Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu's growth in São Paulo and, eventually, in the United States.

In 1985, Fernando expanded his grappling foundation considerably by joining São Paulo state's wrestling team, competing in both greco-roman and freestyle disciplines. He proved dominant at every level he entered, capturing every major national title at both adult and junior levels and earning a place on Brazil's national wrestling squad. According to Grappling.com as cited in Jiu-Jitsu Style (Issue 22, 2014), Fernando qualified for three Olympic Games across his wrestling career — a remarkable achievement that placed him among Brazil's elite grapplers of his generation.

His years on the national team spanned much of the late 1980s and 1990s, overlapping significantly with his development in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Few practitioners of that era simultaneously competed at the national and international level in wrestling while pursuing BJJ under one of the art's most demanding instructors. Fernando participated in Olympic qualifying trials in Colombia in 1996, with his retirement from the national team attributed to approximately 1996–1997. That multi-disciplinary grappling base — judo black belt, national-level wrestler, and BJJ practitioner — would later define both his teaching philosophy and his capacity to connect BJJ with international athletic networks.

Fernando's path to a BJJ black belt was neither linear nor uninterrupted. He began training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu intermittently in the early 1980s, starting under Otávio Almeida through Cassio Marcelo. The turning point came in 1986, when he met Marcelo Behring. Fernando quickly developed a deep admiration for Behring and committed to BJJ with far greater intensity, earning his black belt under Behring in 1989.

Later that same year, Fernando moved to the United States at a time when BJJ was virtually unknown there. He continued training through judo at Georgetown University, winning every tournament he entered — including a Tri-State Championship title. After approximately nine months, he returned to Brazil to prepare for the Pan American and World Wrestling Championships, and the reception at the Behring academy was not what he had expected.

Marcelo Behring asked Fernando to remove his black belt upon his return, citing a ground game that had grown rusty during his time away. Fernando complied, wearing a brown belt for roughly two months. He later reflected on the experience with candor in an interview with BJJScandinavia.com, cited in Jiu-Jitsu Style (Issue 22, 2014): "When I went back to Brazil, Marcelo told me to go back to the brown belt because my technique was not there. Next day I bought a brown belt and I had to wear it for a couple of months. I know for some people it sounds like humiliation but that made me more focused, hungry to learn, to win more tournaments and to prove to him that my loyalty was not on my belt!"

Fernando re-earned his black belt after approximately one year, by 1991, and wasted little time applying it. He immediately began coaching from his family's dojo in São Paulo, launching what would become a long career as both an instructor and an organizational force within Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

With his black belt restored and a coaching platform established, Fernando became one of the central figures in building São Paulo's institutional BJJ infrastructure. In 1991, Carlos Gracie Jr. and Nahum Rabay approached him to co-found the Federação Paulista de Jiu-Jitsu (FPJJ) — giving the sport an organizational backbone in Brazil's most populous state at a formative moment in its development.

His ambitions did not stop there. In 1992, Fernando was introduced to Sport Ju Jutsu and moved quickly to build a competitive team around it, assembling Brazil's first national team for the discipline's World Cup held in Copenhagen, Denmark. Brazil finished in second place — a strong debut for a program Fernando had built from scratch. The venture, however, generated friction. His involvement with Sport Ju Jutsu drew direct criticism from Carlos Gracie Jr. and Nahum Rabay, who labeled him "Brazilian jiu-jitsu's traitor" for competing under a different banner. Those relationships were eventually repaired, but the episode illustrated the intensely territorial nature of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu's early competitive ecosystem — and Fernando's willingness to operate at its edges when he believed it served the broader development of the grappling arts.

Fernando's most tangible contribution to the internationalization of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu came at the first IBJJF World Championship — the Mundials — in 1996. Rather than competing solely as an athlete, he took on the role of recruiter, personally bringing three international competitors to the event at a time when BJJ had almost no foothold outside Brazil.

The first was Eugenio Fuentes Estrada of Cuba — Fernando's former wrestling coach, a connection drawn directly from his national team years. The second was Remco Pardoel of the Netherlands, whom Fernando had known since at least 1994 through the JJIF network; Pardoel had visited São Paulo before his UFC 2 appearance and later went on to earn a BJJ black belt. The third was Hiroki Baba of Japan, who had traveled to São Paulo in September 1995 to train BJJ; as of 2014, Baba ran the Hiro BJJ Academy in Yokohama and held a black belt under Oswaldo Alves.

The diversity of that group — a Cuban wrestling coach, a Dutch UFC veteran, and a Japanese practitioner — reflected both the breadth of Fernando's personal network and the unique position he occupied at the crossroads of wrestling, judo, and BJJ on an international scale. His recruitment effort gave the inaugural Mundials a genuinely global character at an event that might otherwise have remained an exclusively Brazilian affair.

Beyond their contributions to competitive BJJ, Fernando and Mario Yamasaki played a meaningful role in the expansion of mixed martial arts into Brazil. The two brothers worked to bring the UFC to their home country under promoter Robert Meyrowitz and SEG in the late 1990s, leveraging their standing and connections within Brazilian combat sports.

That effort culminated on October 16, 1998, when UFC Brazil: Ultimate Brazil was held — the first UFC event ever staged on Brazilian soil. Both Fernando and Mario served as referees at the event. Fernando did not pursue officiating further after that night, but Mario went on to become one of the UFC's most recognized referees, building a prominent career in that role from 1999 onward. The brothers' combined work behind the scenes and on the mat marked a pivotal moment in MMA history, helping introduce the sport to a Brazilian audience on home soil.

The Yamasaki Academy has its roots in the judo school originally founded by Fernando's father and uncle, but its transformation into a BJJ institution began when Mario Yamasaki brought the family's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to the United States in 1994, establishing the Yamasaki Academy in Rockville, Maryland, shortly after the first UFC in 1993. It was an early foothold for BJJ in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area at a time when the art was only beginning to capture American attention.

Fernando joined Mario in the United States by 2003, forming a partnership that also included Francisco Neto. The three ran the academy together until February 2011, when Mario returned to Brazil to help further spread mixed martial arts, leaving day-to-day operations in the hands of Fernando and Neto. Under their continued stewardship, the Yamasaki Academy grew into one of the oldest BJJ academies in the United States, with a stronghold in Maryland and a significant presence across Washington, DC, and Virginia.

The academy's reach extended well beyond American borders, with affiliated locations operating in the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and Sweden — an international footprint that reflected the same cross-continental network Fernando had helped build throughout his career in wrestling, judo, and jiu-jitsu.

Notable Practitioners and Lineage

The academy produced notable practitioners across its history. Dave "The Rock" Jacobs began training at the Yamasaki Academy in February 1998 and received his black belt from the academy in May 2005, going on to open his own academy in Vienna, Virginia. One of Jacobs's students, Adrienne Adams — founder of The Green Gi hemp kimono brand — trained under his guidance and won the blue belt women's middleweight title at the 2009 IBJJF World Championship, a result that connected the Yamasaki lineage directly to one of the sport's most prestigious stages.