How I got started in BJJ

December of 2001, I was a freshman at Johns Hopkins University. I spent the beginning half of the month feeling overwhelmed and a bit depressed. Finals were consuming my life, I was in a long distance relationship, and worst of all... wrestling wasn't fun anymore. I was a guy that always had it together, no matter how much stuff piled up, I felt like I could handle anything; this was the first time in my life that things felt really hard. Wrestling had been a humongous part of my life for the past 7.5 years and for the first time in my life, it just wasn't fun. Unfortunately, the primary reason was the program and not the sport itself, and I was left with two choices... Leave the school or quit the program. I chose to quit, my education was far more important than the sport. What was I going to do? Leave JHU and go to Iowa and be JV while getting a lesser education (no offense to anybody who went to Iowa and got an amazing education)?

Thinking about it now, it was definitely one of the best decisions of my life. I would be lying if I said that I didn't think about it and wonder what would have happened if I stuck with it, but I would never say I regret the decision. Deciding not to wrestle gave me a lot of free time. When wrestling season started at JHU, I never had free time. I would wake up early, go for a run, go to class, do homework, go to wrestling practice, study, go to the gym, study, then go to bed. A lot of workouts crammed into a day. I was never a fan of working out for the sake of working out and being in shape, and I'm still not. I am not the type of person that goes to the gym to get ripped and look good. I always had the purpose of going to the gym to get in shape for competition, to be in better shape than my opponents. Like Dan Gable said "when I picture my opponent working, I work hard, when I picture my opponent stop working, I work even harder." That's the mindset I had, but with wrestling gone, I really had a lot of free time on my hands, there was no longer an opponent to work against.

I had been a fan of the UFC from very early on. I remember going to Blockbuster and somehow renting the UFC videos. I was 13 yrs old, they had that red and yellow mature sticker on there, and my dad would never look or question it. I saw the first few in order and saw how Royce Gracie dismantled his opponents. I always thought about how a good wrestler would beat Royce. Along came Dan Severn, and 16 minutes or so into the fight, there went Dan Severn. Throughout the years I would rent a UFC here and there, was very excited to see guys like Mark Coleman and Kevin Randleman, both excellent wrestlers, guys I would always root for. I didn't follow the sport like I do now, there simply weren't enough resources then. The only news you would ever hear, see, or read about was how it was "human cockfighting." I didn't even have internet at home until I was 16 (mind you this was 1998, not everybody had internet then), and even then, the thought never crossed my mind to Alta-Vista search the UFC.

Back to December of 2001, with all my free time, I decided to look up the UFC on the internet and found out that UFC wasn't the only free for all fighting organization, first off, it was a humongous sport called Mixed Martial Arts and the popularity in Japan DWARFED the popularity in America. Things had changed a bit though, there were some rules now, and people wore gloves. The Pride organization had all the great fighters from the UFC that I remembered and then some. I started downloading highlight reels and ordered VHS copies of the fights on eBay. I noticed a trend, the guys that were winning, weren't winning with the wrestling style of ground and pound. Guys were winning with submissions. I don't know the exact point at which I decided that I wanted to learn how to submit people, but I do remember that I researched schools shortly before my Christmas break and found a place 10 minutes from my home in Dallas, TX run by one of the greatest BJJ practitioners and instructors in the world, Carlos Machado.

Sometime in early January of 2002, I went to the introductory class which had 4 people in it. A purple belt, James Brown, was going to teach the class, he asked me if I had wrestled or anything before, I told him I had for quite some time, he then responded "Oh, you don't need the intro class, go roll with some of the guys over there." I walked over to the other side of the mat, was very warmly greeted by the man himself, Carlos Machado. He asked me about my experience, then told me to go train with one of his other purple belts, Roberto Kaelin. We started on the feet, I took him down with ease, only to be getting choked about 10 seconds later. This happened about 5 times, I didn't know what was going on, but I later learned he kept putting me in a triangle choke. I was addicted, I wanted to learn how to do what he was doing to me. I signed up that night, and for the month I was home on break, I went to about 10 classes/week.

It has been over 8 years and my interest and love for the art continues to grow.