How Austin Became The Capital Of No Gi BJJ

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15 years go there were less than a handful of Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belts spread across Austin, Texas’s entire metropolitan area. Now the biggest names in the sport call the city home. Today I’m going to provide a first hand account of how we got here.

Table of Contents

• First Things First

• Austin Texas BJJ Origins

• 2000’s Population Boom

• Austin’s Mass Appeal

• Covid Creates A Competition Hole

• Austin’s Future As A Fight Town

• Premium Preview

• The Most Important News

• Share And Support

Austin, Texas is the best place in the world to train no gi jiujitsu. In 2024 a homegrown talent was half of the best no gi match ever at CJI, another took home jiujitsu’s first ever million dollar prize, and two other Austin athletes took home ADCC gold medals. This is a stark contrast from a decade ago when Austin sent zero athletes to compete at the 2013 ADCC World Championships.

If you think this is a weird development you’re right. No one could have predicted a podcaster’s business ventures and a world altering pandemic would turn the live music capital of the world into the best place to learn how to break someone’s leg. But it did and I was here for all of it and I’m going to tell you what went down.

I moved to Austin a decade ago to finish my degree. Ironically, I was living in another jiujitsu stronghold, San Diego, but desperately desired a change of pace from California. For those that have been to San Diego that might sound insane. “Why would you want to leave those beaches and that perfect weather?!”

San Diego is an incredible place to have a life. The scenery and people are beautiful and you can live out one of the most pleasant routines possible. But that’s just what it is, routine, and getting one off the ground there can be challenging. Especially considering the astronomical cost of living that comes with beach adjacent life.

San Diego is not the best place to start a life as a broke college student. It’s expensive, like really fucking expensive, and most people I met that weren’t students were in the navy, doctors, engineers, or working at a bar. I was approaching none of those.

At the time, San Diego’s saving grace for me was its position in the world as a combat sports hub. In the two years I lived there I trained at Victory MMA with Dean Lister, Jeff Glover, Fabricio Camoes, and countless other unnamed world beaters stopping by to train. If you took a 15 minute walk from the gym you’d pass by the Ribeiro brothers’ old school, University of Jiu-jitsu, and famed MMA gym The Arena. To say San Diego is densely populated with talent is an understatement.

One of my training partners was a salty old black belt named Ben. Ben was in his mid 50’s, weighed about 150 pounds, and still tapped half the room with a weird leg lock game ahead of its time.

Martial arts gym culture is both alien and intimate. You’re trying to strangle people for months and you sometimes you barely learn their name, but you’ll still be greeted with a smile and hug before and after each round.

I knew Ben’s name. I noticed he took an unannounced multi-month absence. I didn’t have a clue where he had gone until, one day, he casually stepped back onto the mat.

Dude, where’ve you been?
Austin!
Really, why?
I’m moving. Opening a gym there.
No way - I’m moving to Austin too!
Cool. You should come train.

So it goes.

When I arrived in Austin there were about five real Brazilian jiu-jitsu gyms. There were tons of slef-defense schools that advertised “Ju-jutsu” and “ground fighting” but we were a ways away from passing the Ribeiro brothers on the street. What we did have was the infrastructure to create a thriving Brazilian jiu-jitsu community.

Everyone in Austin that was training before the 2010’s can trace their experience back to Vandry Jiujitsu up North and Relson Gracie down south. There were a few other programs dotted around the city that have stood the test of the time. Vasquez Academy was down south. John’s Gym, Cooper MMA, and Team Rabadi, the gym that birthed Kody Steele and the Tackett brothers, were up north. Still there were no major jiujitsu teams that legitimized Austin as a destination for grappling.

Just around 2010, a few key names made Austin a recognizable destination. Paragon Jiujitsu, Gracie Humaita, and Gracie Barra all established programs in the city that were closer and more accessible to central Austin. The importance of their proximity cannot be overstated.

Austin is the live music capital of the world. It’s a fun, overgrown counter culture college town that has spread to over a million residents in the metropolitan area thanks to the music, politics, and tech industries all adjacent to the centerpiece of the city. The University of Texas.

Texas is one of the original “Public Ivies”. As I write this US News has it tied for 7th on the list of top public universities in the country and the football team is number 1 in the nation. It attracts young, high achievers from all over the world to study there. Then, the fun nightlife, relaxed day time, and relatively low cost of living makes people want to stay in the city in lieu of moving to other major cities to start careers. But these kids need something to do when they aren’t studying and partying. Enter UT BJJ.

The University of Texas’s Brazilian jiujitsu program has had incredible instruction over the years. When I showed up the program was led by a De la Riva black belt, Jeff Rockwell; brown belt no gi world champion, Mike Harmon; and the number one ranked brown belt in Texas, Jose Portillo Jr. It was nothing short of world class.

Former students would return to the club to drop in and train. They would exchange pleasantries and roll with the current students. These visitors would invite the students to their home gym so they could continue training when the club was not in active during school breaks.

This more or less legitimized the hobby for many. In turn, the newer, young students would invite their friends to the club or the gyms they were branching out to.

While growth like this is sustainable it’s slow. What Austin jiujitsu needed was what came next. Media attention and major competitions.

More than anything, three brands pushed Austin’s Brazilian jiu-jitsu scene to national note. FloSports, Onnit, and, the jiujitsu school 10th Planet Austin.

Before ONNIT sold to Unilever for 100’s of millions of dollars it was a kooky health and fitness brand. They sold niche products for niche athletes. Kettlebells, steel clubs, and functional mushroom supplements. All of these were promoted by Joe Rogan and his podcast. It was Rogan’s friend, Eddie Bravo that would push Austin jiujitsu to the next level.

Bravo, leads the massive jiujitsu franchise 10th Planet. Today they run hundreds of affiliates across Russia, Sweden, and more countries. They even have three in Austin alone.

In 2016, 10th Planet’s Austin location was brand new. To make a splash, they held an invite-only event called the Onnit Invitational. This was years before cash prizes in jiujitsu were common so the the $1000 they were offering made the tournament a huge deal.

The first Onnit invitational brought future No Gi World Champion, Manuel Ribamar, up from San Antonio, 10th Planet standout, Richie “Boogeyman” Martinez, was their representative, and the homegrown Paragon black belt, Jose Portillo was fighting for the city.

The event was supposed to be a 10th Planet showcase. A chance for Martinez to show how effective the new gym’s system wa

s. Portillo had other plans.

Portillo submitted Martinez with a heel hook took to take the title, cash prize, and legitimize the jiujitsu scene spontaneously springing up from Austin. The event ended as an exciting success. FloGrappling put out a compelling highlight reel so Onnit decided to sponsor 9 more invitational events, each with cash and sponsorship prizes.

Onnit would invite future stars PJ Barch, Gordon Ryan, and many more to compete. Other homegrown talent like the Tackett brothers earned national recognition by beating up on adult blackbelts as scrappy teenagers.

Because FloGrappling was headquartered in Austin, it was easy for them to chronicle the stories surrounding the athletes at these events. This further legitimized Austin as a destination for jiujitsu athletes. You could not only compete, but stop by the largest media company in the sport while in town.

With Austin as a fun destination you could compete at, anyone was happy to visit. But the upcoming world altering event pushed the scene beyond what anyone could have predicted.

When COVID-19 struck the world no one knew what to do. Every state and country had a different idea on how to combat the pandemic. Unfortunately we’re still unraveling the arguments and fallout from those years.

I’m not going to re-litigate any policy choices here. All I know is Texas chose to stay open in limited, ever-altering capacity. This meant many people and businesses flocked to the state to try and continue life as normal. Namely, Fight 2 Win (F2W).

Today F2W is known as “The biggest party in grappling”. Before that, it was the biggest major grappling promotion that regularly put on paying matches so competitors could pursue a professional career. F2W was the place to compete outside of the IBJJF and ADCC World Championships.

Going into COVID, F2W had momentum. When the world flipped upside down, they had limited options to capitalize on that momentum and continue hosting events. Out of necessity, F2W was forced to put on a disproportionate amount of events in Texas to keep the promotion alive.

Starting with F2W 139 the next 15 events were spread across Dallas and Austin. After briefly going to Philadelphia and Florida for 9 total events, F2W returned to Texas for another 11 events. The whole time they were flying in talent from around the country to compete and build their brands with FloGrappling’s media backing.

Around this time FloGrappling started flirting with their own event series Who’s Number One (WNO). Originally, WNO was co-promoted with F2W. I was fortunate enough to compete on one of those events. I’ll never forget the absurdity of the locker room..

I was both anxious and bored. Feeling the calm that you force over yourself to hide your nerves when you’re trying to focus. I was doing everything in my power to take command of the butterflies in my stomach so they would listen and fly in formation for me.

I was pacing back and forth, doing whatever I could to stay warm but not burn up any unnecessary energy. Then I hear yelling.

You need to put your mask on if you’re warming up.
Oh but I’m about to walk out.
Back here. You need to put a mask on.
But-
When you’re in your seat or on a mat you can take your mask off. Here you need to stay safe.

The man glared at me as his nose poked over his mask. I nodded and pulled mine up. I was ready and willing to preserve my lungs before walking out on stage to get my limbs disfigured.

WNO was incubated in Austin by necessity. Texas was open for business and FloGrappling is headquartered there. WNO had to start in Austin or it wouldn’t have survived and lived on to become the unique premier jiujitsu event it is today. The events’ success even led to an Ultimate Fighter like reality show called Who’s Next, filmed in Austin.

To get on those events more easily, and take advantage of the relatively lax policies, the biggest names in no gi jiujitsu moved to Austin so they could keep training and competing. John Danaher’s New Wave Jiujitsu and Craig Jones’s BTeam arrived in Texas just in time to train for the 2022 ADCC World Championships.

With these two super teams rooted in the Lone Star State, men and women hoping to make a name at the ADCC World Championships started flying out to train with them. At the 2022 ADCC World Championships, Austin took home 28% of the possible medals and had a minimum of three competitors in every single men’s division. Austin’s place at the center of the jiujitsu world was cemented.

Now the question is, what’s next?

In the past decade or so we saw the boom and relative bust of Crossfit. Today we’re watching Pickleball spread across the US. These phenomenons make me wonder, are we in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu bubble or is it here for the long haul?

Everything can benefit from hype and trends. I’m certainly biased, but I have to think submission grappling seems to be a bit resistant to physical culture trends because of the skills you acquire by practicing the sport. Self-defense isn’t going out of style any time soon. More importantly, there are major areas of Austin that don’t have a good place to train yet. My friends and I are solving that for East Austin by opening East Austin Jiujitsu Parlor.

If I had to guess, I’d say Austin has a real future as a fight town.

10th Planet Austin is building a fight team from the ground up and one homegrown star is on the cusp of a UFC contract. Kody Steele, famous in the grappling world for hard suplexes, is 6-0 in professional MMA with three stoppages. Here is his most recent fight:

The UFC even set two important records at their last Austin. It was the highest grossing sports event at the Moody Center as well as the UFC’s highest US Fight Night Gate. We have a market that is interested in and excited for MMA fights. And why would it be any other way?

Austin is fit. Active. It’s a counter culture city that loves to compete and be entertained. What other than combat sports could so perfectly capture the attention of a million people that have the option of attending free live music every day of the week and a music festival every month? The hyper accessible spectacle of training Brazilian jiu-jitsu was tailor made for Austin.

Sure, Austin might have caught lightning in a bottle. But it looks like the whole city is ready to keep it in.