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This looks like a neat article about a really cool woman! You've clearly put a ton of work into this one. I don't know much about martial arts, so please feel extraordinarily free to correct me if I'm just wrong about how something works.
My main concern is about the reliability of a number of the sources cited. I think that if we can resolve that, or find alternate sources for the relevant information, this can easily be brought up to Good Article status.
"3rd degree Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) black belt practitioner and coach": I don't think this quite works out for me grammatically (makes it sound like she's a practitioner of black belt). Rephrase?
Is there a distinction between "jiu-jitsu" generally and "Brazilian jiu-jitsu" specifically? sentences like "After opening South Africa's first jiu-jitsu academy in her garage, Thomas won two BJJ world champion titles" leave me confused about whether there's a reason we're switching between the terms.
"Considered a pioneer in the sport" -- by whom? (By the link, presumably, but this is the kind of subjective statement that should probably be attributed in-text; and the link doesn't actually seem to make that specific claim.) Also, if this is going to be in the lead, it should be discussed in the body of the article as well.
"the first jiu jitsu black belt from the African continent" -- this claim doesn't appear to be backed up by the cited source?
How reliable a source is bjjheroes.com? Glancing over it, my first impression is of a fan blog run by one guy, but I'm not familiar with the topic and might be missing something.
The consensus appears to be that bloodyelbow is not a reliable source.
Birth year does not appear to be given in source.
"in her garage" -- doesn't appear to be stated in source.
"South African female" -- using "female" as a noun like this is a little awkward. Maybe "female South African" or "South African woman" instead?
"first South African female to receive a blue belt" -- doesn't appear to be stated in source.
I'm also concerned about fightergirls.com as a source. Their website looks alarmingly like it exists exclusively to advertise their store -- I'm looking at the homepage with those context-free lists of terms people might google.
"under the tutelage of 5th degree black belt Luis Heredia" -- doesn't appear to be stated in source.
"brown belt division" -- link this directly to the "brown belt" section, like you've done with other belt colors?
"Triple Crown Aloha State BJJ Championship" -- what's up with this being italicized?
"Thomas's dedication to the sport, and the lack of female competitors at the time" -- the first half of this isn't in the source, and seems less than neutral. Maybe just drop everything before the comma (and the word "and")?
"brown/black belt category": MOS:SLASH discourages this. It would be helpful to rewrite the sentence without the slash, ideally in a way that clarifies whether this means that brown and black belts are equivalent, or that the category was brown and black belts combined, or something else.
Less of a consensus on this one, but it still looks like there's at least some concern about graciemag as a reliable source.
"losing by leglock" -- doesn't appear to be stated in source.
Consensus appears to be that tapology is not a reliable source.
"prestigious advanced mathematics tournament": this definitely seems like opinion. I assume you don't know what tournament, but failing that, I think this should probably be written as "she won what so-and-so described as a 'prestigious...'"
It would be cool to have a little bit of paragraph-style text here explaining the significance of these accomplishments or otherwise providing context; right now it's kind of a wall of bullet-point lists.
I'm confused about why sometimes details like "openweight" or "brown and black division" are in the text, and sometimes they're footnoted. Unless there's a particular reason for this, I'd vote for picking one style and sticking with it.
I wonder if this wouldn't work best in a table? It seems like there could be columns for year, belt division, weight class, ranking, and competition.
Concerned about strictlyfighters as a source. Looks like a personal blog. Is this someone who's widely regarded as an expert within the community?
Glancing over some other similar articles, this seems like a standard thing to include. (Which makes me wonder if there shouldn't be some kind of standardized infobox template for it, but that's beside the point.) Maybe go for the nice "→" arrows other articles seem to use, instead of the ">" signs?
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