Blog & News

Coach Christian and Junny Ocasio recently competed at a bjj and grappling tournament in upstate New York and took home a bunch of medals to our gym in NYC. Junny’s been working super hard, and as we all know, Christian’s been competing a lot this season. Congrats to them both!

For the longest time, if you were to ask me what I do for a living, I would tell you that “I teach Mixed Martial Arts,” more specifically Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. But I’ve noticed that recently (and by that, I mean in the past few years) my response has changed to “I’m a BJJ Coach” or “I Coach Mixed Martial Arts.”

A student asked me this question recently. He’d just seen one of my old amateur fights on YouTube. Despite losing the decision, it was one of the best performances I ever had, and I was still an amateur (though this was before the big push to regulate Professional MMA via state sanctioning bodies, as is today’s standard).

Mixed martial arts fights are legal in forty-nine states, with New York being the only state that banned the sport. Now that’s set to change since New York’s state legislature has finally approved legalizing professional MMA.