The Los Angeles Jiu Jitsu Club

I'm super proud of my best friend, Eric Medina, for stepping into his greatness and opening up an actual living-breathing Jiu-Jitsu Academy.

Eric and I met wrestling at Moorpark College and first embarked on the Jiu-Jitsu journey separately, (but at the same time.) It was shortly after that we started training together at Jean Jacques Machado Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu Academy. We both liked competing and found success in the competition circuit. We started small, but before we knew it we were competing on big stages like EBI, Ultimate Mat Warriors, Finishers Sub-Only, and many more. I stopped competing when I found a love for the personal development world, but Eric found success, placing at the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation (IBJJF) World Tournament and at the United World Wrestling Grappling World Championship in Serbia. 🇷🇸

Sometime after our second EBI competition, we felt it was time to open a gym, but without the commitment of opening a gym. This is how The Los Angeles Jiu-Jitsu Club was born. We decided to get a house, put mats in the dining room, and make a Jiu-Jitsu Airbnb for LA-bound travelers looking to compete or get top-of-the-line training. We had people from all over the world stay with us. We had grappling superstars like:
Garry Lee Tonon
Gordon Ryan
Geovanny Martinez
Richie Martinez
Grace Gundrum
Pete "The Greek" Letsos
Samir Chantre Dahas
Milton Bastos
Osvaldo Moizinho, and so many more, that I’m going to feel awful about some of the names I left off this very small list. We knew the house was going to be a success before any of these people came in because Joe Rogan commented on our Instagram before we were even officially moved in, "What a great idea! Best of luck with it!"

The experiences we were able to create at the house are some that I will never forget. In order to make some money we hosted a homestay program for kids from China 🇨🇳, most of whom didn’t speak any English, and we got all of them (we had around 50-60 overall) training Jiu-Jitsu. We started multiple passion projects that all became successful out of that house. We helped create Jiu-Jitsu In The Park into a massive success, we created multiple Jiu-Jitsu At The Beach events with our great friend Andrew Murillo, we created an incredible tournament company with U.S. Submission Grappling League (USSGL), that we established alongside our amazing friends, Blair Green, Andrew Murillo, Raf Esparza, and Octavio Villanueva. With USSGL, we got to do some really cool and unique events that were unlike any other tournaments, like the one on the Broadway Pier next to the USS Midway or the one we did in Selland Arena.

We also got to be on TV. Bushido Battlegrounds filmed multiple episodes of the show at the house, including my own, and Eric’s (still in production.) We were featured in multiple podcasts and were regular staples on Raf Esparza’s show and all of his shenanigans, like when he did an ADCC companion/24-hour long Jiu-Jitsu tournament, where I can say I had the honor of beating the incredible Keith Krikorian in Tic Tac Toe-vertime at 3 am (very official match.)

So many shenanigans, so much fun, and so many memories. Eric, I’m proud to see all you accomplish and am so happy that you are taking this crazy idea we had to put a gym in our home and give it a brand new life. Your students all love you, and everything you touch becomes successful. I can’t wait to see the future you create for The Los Angeles Jiu-Jitsu Club.

Love you dude ❤️‍🔥

Plug One Two: Los Angeles Jiujitsu Club Full Interview

→ Watch it on YouTube, here.

Inner Jiu-Jitsu: The LA Jiu-Jitsu Club

→ Watch it on YouTube, here.