‘I Could Be One Of The Best To Ever Do It’ – Meet BJJ Prodigy Cole Abate Ahead Of His ONE Debut
“Ice” Cole Abate is the latest Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu wunderkind to join ONE Championship’s rapidly expanding roster of world-class submission grapplers.
The 20-year-old will make his highly anticipated promotional debut on December 6 in U.S. primetime at ONE Fight Night 26: Lee vs. Rasulov on Prime Video when he locks horns with Japanese legend Shinya “Tobikan Judan” Aoki in a lightweight tilt at Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand.
Long hailed as the most talented young rising star in the sport, Abate’s arrival in ONE Championship has fans anxious with excitement.
Before he makes his first official walk as a ONE athlete, we look back at the American’s climb to the world’s largest martial arts organization.
Hooked On BJJ
Abate was born in Beaumont, Texas, where he recalls always being athletically gifted and naturally competitive.
But while he excelled in team sports like basketball and baseball, he knew early on that his passion lay with BJJ and the rewards of an individual sport.
He started in the grappling-based art at just 5 years old and realized that BJJ was for him in just his second class:
“I remember there was a real turning point for me when, at the end of class, we’d do this sumo game where you’d have to push the person out of the ring. They’d make a little circle with the belts, and you just have to get low and drive the person out. And my professor just kept putting in the higher belts. He kept putting in the better kids, and I just kept driving the kids out.
“That was kind of the turning point for me because it’s like, even though you play basketball and baseball, you’re the athletic kid. You’re the star on the team.
“In jiu-jitsu, you don’t need that extra person to make you win or help determine the results of the match or the competition. In jiu-jitsu, it’s all you out there.”
Hooked from the beginning, Abate would eventually quit all other sports to focus entirely on BJJ.
He spent his first nine years training under respected coach and decorated black belt competitor Rodrigo Pinheiro. With the full support of his parents and careful guidance from Pinheiro, the youngster competed as often as he could, racking up gold medals at every major tournament to establish himself as the country’s top BJJ prodigy.
Above all, Abate understood right away that his work ethic would play the biggest role in how successful he could become:
“I learned at a very early age that the amount of work I put in is what I would get out when it came to the results of the competition. I didn’t really have to have somebody tell me that.
“That experience alone and just feeling the happiness of winning and going after the higher belts made me motivated to continue training.”
A Dream Move To Art Of Jiu-Jitsu
By the age of 8, Abate had convinced his parents to let him homeschool so that he could spend even more time training and competing in BJJ.
When he was 14, his father was given the opportunity to relocate for work and asked his son where his dream training destination would be.
Abate already knew he wanted to make BJJ his career and become an all-time great. To that end, he told his dad he wanted to learn under brothers Gui and Rafa Mendes at the famed Art of Jiu-Jitsu Academy in Costa Mesa, California:
“I saw what they were doing at AoJ, and I’ve always really admired it.
“They were investing in the younger generation more than the Black Belt World Champions because they were thinking in the future. They were thinking more about building a system that would run smoothly for years to come.”
Abate’s father agreed to the move, and before he knew it, young Cole was trying his first class at AoJ.
He recalls training hard against a number of the school’s top athletes that day, but what really stuck with him was a conversation he had with head instructor Gui Mendes after the class. That conversation would set the tone for Abate’s incredible journey in the following years:
“He said your goal right now is not to be the best green belt, not to be the best kid, not to be the best 14-year-old. You need to be the best person at your weight regardless of how old, what titles the person has, and what belt they’re wearing. You have, at this point, over 10 years of jiu-jitsu experience.
“There’s no excuse for losing or just accepting defeat against those guys. You can beat them. You just gotta put your mind to it.
“So, don’t try to be the best green belt here. Don’t try to be the best kid here. We all know you are. Now is the time to get ahead of everybody else and just try to be the best in the world at your weight.”
Inspiring Others Through Adversity
Under the tutelage of the Mendes brothers, Abate continued to enjoy unprecedented competition success throughout his colored belt career, becoming the youngest male to ever win the ultra-tough ADCC North American Trials.
Given his accomplishments as a teen, he knew he was destined for greatness:
“I knew that that was the highest level for kids and saw that I was above it. It let me know that I was above everybody my age. So that if I just stayed above everybody my age as the years went on, I could be one of the best to ever do it.”
Indeed, Abate’s rise through the ranks was essentially a perfect blueprint for a young phenom. In July 2023, he was awarded his well-deserved BJJ black belt and looked ready to take the highest levels of competition by storm.
Late that year, though, he suffered a broken tibia in training, derailing the big plans for his rookie year as a black belt. The injury is one of the most devastating and difficult to come back from in all of sports, and “Ice” Cole was forced to the sidelines for months due to surgery and a lengthy recovery process.
He said that his parents and coaches played a key role in allowing him to handle the setback with a positive attitude:
“I think I had a really good mindset about it after the first few days post-surgery, and I credit a lot of that to both my parents and my professor.
“They told me that this should be treated just like any competition. It should be treated with the same mindset. Imagine you’re getting ready for the biggest tournament of your life, and everything you do revolves around that one goal. And your goal is to get back to 100 percent and pretend like nothing ever happened.”
In 2024, Abate returned to action and quickly lived up to the massive hype surrounding him, defeating decorated Black Belt World Champion Gianni Grippo on his way to winning gold at the IBJJF No-Gi Pan-American Championships.
Looking back at his injury, Abate is now grateful for the opportunity to overcome adversity and inspire others.
He explained:
“At the end of the day, things like that make your story even more interesting. And I always tell people, it’s important to have those losses, those setbacks, those injuries to test your character.
“Because if your career is only uphill, there are no times where you go down, it’s hard for anybody that watches you and admires your work to feel inspired by that because you’re just Superman at that point. You can’t really inspire people, because it’s not very realistic.
“So I’d rather have a story that, yes, is inspiring, yes, is successful. Of course, I don’t want any of that to happen, per se, but I want it to be a story that people can relate to and feel inspired by.”
Reaching New Heights In ONE
The 20-year-old Abate is now excited to showcase his talents on the global stage in the world’s largest martial arts organization.
His career goal is lofty but simple – cement himself as one of the greatest submission grapplers of all time by competing against the best of the best in ONE:
“I think there’s a lot of potential for me to add to my audience and add to my image as being the young guy, the person that has been doing everything right since they were a kid, and be able to show that story to even more people. So I think that’s what excites me, and I feel like it’s in line with my goals.
“I’ve had my goals since I’ve been a kid about what I wanna do once I’m a black belt. My goal is to go down as one of the best Americans this sport has ever seen, and everything that ONE is offering to me is in line with that.”
