Brazil defeats Korea and becomes three-time World Taekwondo Champion
Brazil continues to make history! The Brazilian Taekwondo team has just won the title at the World Taekwondo World Cup Team Championships, held in Wuxi, China. Brazil defeated none other than the South Korean team, the birthplace of Taekwondo, by 2–0 in the final.
This victory reaffirms, for the third time, Brazil as a world power in Taekwondo. The national team was already riding a wave of success: just days earlier, at the individual World Championships, it had won two gold medals and two bronze. Now, by reaching the top in the team tournament, considered the most important among nations, Brazil has claimed first place. We are talking about the third consecutive time that Brazil has won this title, following victories in 2023 and 2024.
The team competition works as follows: each match between countries is played over up to three rounds of three minutes each. The country that wins two of these rounds wins the match. During the rounds, athletes rotate constantly, alternating with each other. On the scoreboard, the move that scores the most is the spinning kick to the head, worth five points. On the way to the final, Brazil faced and defeated Kazakhstan in the quarter-finals and Uzbekistan in the semi-finals. In the final against Korea, the second round was won by a decisive strike in the last second.
The Brazilian team and the protagonists
The line-up of the Brazilian team for the final featured the following names:
- Maria Clara Pacheco (individual world champion)
- Henrique Marques (individual world champion)
- Edival Pontes (world silver medallist)
- Milena Titoneli (world silver medallist)
- Paulo Ricardo
- Allif Barreto
It is not just a “good team”, but a line-up of athletes who have already proven their ability on the global stage. For Brazil, defeating South Korea, a traditional Taekwondo powerhouse, carries huge significance.
It is worth remembering that the team competition is not part of the official Olympic Games programme, although it was presented as an exhibition event at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, without counting for medals. Even so, this type of competition is extremely important for international Taekwondo, as well as serving as a kind of “showcase” for the various national teams, displaying the collective level of each country.
Even though the team format is not yet Olympic, victories like this increase the prestige of the sport within Brazil, opening opportunities for more sponsorships, media coverage, and institutional support.
The protagonists of this story
The team that represented Brazil in winning the World Cup Team Championships for the third time is made up of athletes who rank among the best in the world, and what’s most interesting is that many of them have crossed paths for years in international competitions.
Maria Clara Pacheco, for example, is one of the most promising names in world Taekwondo. Born in Ceará, she showed talent for the sport as a teenager and, in 2024, won the individual world title in the under-62 kg category, placing Brazil on top of the podium in a division historically dominated by Asian athletes. In Wuxi, Maria Clara once again stood out, scoring crucial points both in the semi-final and in the final against Korea. Her quick reading of the fights and mastery of spinning kicks (which score higher) proved decisive in the final result.
Another highlight is Henrique Marques, who also won individual gold at the 2025 World Championships and has been seen as the natural successor to Edival “Netinho” Pontes.
Edival Pontes, “Netinho”, is a veteran in the national team and a key figure in this generation of Brazilian Taekwondo. He was a silver medallist at the 2025 World Championships and had already represented the country at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Milena Titoneli, another world silver medallist, is also a reference. She was the first Brazilian woman to win a medal at the Taekwondo World Championships in 2019 and took part in the Tokyo Olympics.
The history of Taekwondo in the Brazilian team
The 2025 achievement did not happen by chance; it is the result of years of work by the Brazilian Taekwondo Confederation (CBTKD), which has been investing in international exchanges and in the development of qualified teams.
In 2023, Brazil won the world team title for the first time, surprising the Taekwondo world by defeating none other than South Korea in the final, in Cancún, Mexico. At the time, the victory was considered “historic” by the international press, as it marked the end of more than a decade of Asian dominance.
In 2024, once again, Brazil repeated the feat, this time in Saudi Arabia. That year, the highlight was Milena Titoneli, who secured the victory in the match against Turkey.
Arriving in Wuxi, China, in 2025, Brazil was already seen as a favourite – something almost unthinkable a few years earlier. Still, facing Korea on Asian soil meant added pressure. The title, achieved with a clean 2–0 victory, was more than a title defence; it was a definitive statement that Brazil is indeed the new centre of world Taekwondo.
The world team tricampeonato places Brazil at an unprecedented level. Until now, no country outside Asia had won three consecutive titles.
This article was first published in Portuguese on 7 November 2025.
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