The Grappling Monthly Podcast

A lifetime of martial arts that began at a boxing bag above a snooker hall. Professor Jon Bond of Renzo Gracie Evolution boxed through his twenties, then walked into SBG Manchester looking for a boxing gym and stayed about ten years, training with the pro team and coaching striking. He has trained in Hong Kong, Sydney, and Brazil, and now coaches in Chatsworth, CA.

Prof. Bond shares stories from a lifetime dedicated to the martial arts including a clear view of why jiu-jitsu is easier to love than to watch, the many ways people learn jiu-jitsu now, from fundamentals to long chains of transitions, and what happens to all of them once people start to roll, and much more.

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport. The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms. Subscribe and turn on notifications. IG and TikTok: @grapplingmonthly 

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]

#jiujitsu #bjjlifestyle #martialarts

This conversation is about how a martial artist with that many teachers decides what to keep.

Prof. Steve Baca holds rank in two jiu-jitsu systems often treated as rivals and does not see the conflict. He explains what it means for a teacher to imprint on your game.

He makes the case that some techniques arrive on their own schedule, and that measuring your progress against other people's is where students go wrong.

He describes how he thinks about jiu-jitsu in patterns, why he will not reset to neutral, and why he does not believe in bad positions.

He also argues that sport jiu-jitsu, which he teaches and values, is not self-defense, and talks about loving martial arts for the art as much as the fight.

Recorded at Legacy Glendale on Thursday October 15, 2026.

Professor Steve Baca runs NoHo MMA in North Hollywood, California.

Professor Steve Baca NoHo MMA Website: nohomma.com  

About Grappling Monthly 

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications. IG and TikTok: @grapplingmonthly For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]

"That's when I realized, I didn't know how to fight."

Professor Joey Alvarado has dedicated a lifetime to martial arts. He is a former MMA fighter and Cage of Fire lightweight champion. He holds a black belt in Hapkido, Jeet Kune Do, and a 3rd degree Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt as well as a brown belt in Kuk Sool. He is also the creator of Kettlejitsu.

He teaches Brazilian jiu-jitsu (gi and no-gi) and kettlejitsu classes at Legacy Burbank in Burbank, California.

He came to BJJ the long way: years of Korean martial arts, one night that exposed what they did not cover, and a search for the ground that ran through VHS tapes before it reached the Machados in Los Angeles. He fought professional MMA for seven years, when California fighters still crossed into Mexico to compete, and explains how fighting without a coach shaped the way he coaches. On class structure, etiquette, and ecological training, his position is that the old format still works.

On nogi: why wrestling is now required, what the no-points format costs spectators, and whether shorter matches could make the gi watchable. And the origin of Kettle Jitsu, the kettlebell system he built at his first gym. Recorded at Legacy Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Headquarters in Burbank California.

Guest: Professor Joey Alvarado Academy: Legacy BJJ, Burbank, California

Website: www.legacybjj.com

ABOUT GRAPPLING MONTHLY

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications. IG and TikTok: @grapplingmonthly

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]

#jiujitsu #martialarts #blackbelt #bjj #kettlejitsu

"It's the ultimate team sport and the ultimate individual sport."

Coach Austen Moore  leads the club wrestling program at Grand Canyon University, which competes in the NCWA. He is joined by team leads Marisol Peña and Che Ramirez, both active competitors.

At the center of the conversation is a contradiction: a sport decided one on one, a team its athletes describe as a family, and what a wrestling room does to earn that.

It moves through the structure of a college season: conditioning, a return to fundamentals, a measured approach to cutting weight, and a women's side that competes in both folkstyle and freestyle.

Moore explains why faith, family, and school come ahead of the mat, and what he considers a coach's job beyond it.

For Brazilian jiu-jitsu and nogi practitioners, the three compare the pace of wrestling and BJJ, how a wrestler finds a moment to breathe in a match that rarely offers one, and why that pace can cost wrestlers who cross over to jiu-jitsu.

The conversation closes on where grit comes from, the paths that open after college, and how Moore measures progress when winning is not the measure.

GUESTS

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications.

"I'm not teaching for a paycheck. I'm teaching because I love doing this."

Professor Thomas Castro Chamorro is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who teaches the 11 a.m. all-levels class at Legacy Glendale in Glendale, California.

He came to grappling in 2011 by way of a track and field injury and a Frankie Edgar double leg seen on television, and found his footing at an academy in San José, Costa Rica.

The conversation follows the decisions that brought him here: choosing jiu-jitsu over a career as a pilot, a difficult conversation with his father, and a two-week trip to Los Angeles that became a permanent move. He talks about teaching as something he fell into as a blue belt, and why he has never had to fake interest in his students' progress.

On the mat, he explains how a smaller grappler deals with bigger opponents, why a large, untrained white belt worries him for reasons other than submissions, and what changes when training partners treat the round as a game.

Also in the conversation: why he no longer rolls to win, the spread of leg lock systems into kids' classes, and a lightning round.

Recorded on location at Legacy Glendale, in Glendale California.

GUEST

Professor Thomas Castro Chamorro

Legacy Glendale, Glendale, California 11 a.m. class, Monday through Friday, all levels, gi and nogi Website: www.legacybjj.com 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thomy_the_cat_04/ 

ABOUT GRAPPLING MONTHLY

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications.

IG www.instagram.com/@grapplingmonthly 

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected] 

#jiujitsu #bjj #bjjpodcast #martialarts #brazilianjiujitsulifestyle

"My job is to teach jiu-jitsu, not to train jiu-jitsu... But my dream is to train jiu-jitsu."

Beatrice Jin is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who teaches, competes, and helps run Kogaion Academy in Arlington, Virginia. She found BJJ eight years ago, by accident, after moving to Washington, DC for an internship with plans to become a journalist.

She does not consider herself an intuitive grappler, and that has shaped how she learns: through systems, high volumes of positional sparring, and deliberate work on the parts of the game that do not come naturally.

On competition, she talks about nerves that have not changed since purple belt, and about what the tournaments where she performs well have in common.

She walks through the decision to leave her office job for jiu-jitsu, which she calls the hardest of her life, and how she balances her own training with teaching.

The conversation turns to competitive women's jiu-jitsu in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia region, where a weekly women's open mat began with three purple belts, and to what happens when rivals decide to train together.

For newcomers of any age, she sets out the minimum commitment she asks of new students, and what competition shows a coach that the training room cannot.

Also in the conversation: her takeaways from ADCC, why she trains both gi and nogi, and a lightning round.

GUEST

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications.

"I don't know if I found jiu jitsu so much as it found me."

Mike "Murdah" Carrasco is a Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt, DJ, bboy, and artist who trains at Legacy Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Burbank and teaches nogi at Matspace in Burbank.

This conversation is about approaching grappling as a game rather than a contest, and what that changes: how long you last in the sport, what you learn from a new partner, how you carry a BJJ black belt into someone else's gym, and how much of your identity jiu jitsu should hold.

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications.

IG and TikTok: @grapplingmonthly

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]

What does it mean to build a life around jiu-jitsu when the rest of your life refuses to stay the same?

Professor Ariane Dang and Stephen Harty join The Grappling Monthly Podcast at Mizu Studio in Montreal for a conversation about Brazilian jiu-jitsu as a long-term practice rather than a fixed identity.

Both are BJJ black belts whose relationships with the art have changed over time. Competition, teaching, relationships, parenthood, work, and the simple reality of getting older all alter what training can look like. The question running underneath the conversation is what remains when the conditions that once made jiu-jitsu easy to prioritize are no longer there.

That creates a different way of thinking about longevity in BJJ. Progress does not always mean training more, competing more, or performing at the same level indefinitely. Sometimes it means changing the standard, accepting interruption, and finding a way back to the mat without treating every change in circumstance as a retreat from the art.

The conversation also examines the environment that makes that return possible. In a city with a dense Brazilian jiu-jitsu and nogi scene, Montreal offers practitioners very different gym cultures within a small geographic area. Ariane discusses why those differences matter particularly for women entering BJJ, where the coach, training partners, number of women on the mat, and overall culture of an academy can determine whether an uncomfortable first experience becomes an exit from the sport or the beginning of a long practice.

There is also a larger discussion about what it means to teach jiu-jitsu now. Students have access to instructionals, YouTube, Instagram, competing methodologies, and more technical information than previous generations of practitioners. That access has increased scrutiny of coaches while also giving them more opportunities to study, adapt, and reconsider how Brazilian jiu-jitsu should be taught.

Across those subjects, Ariane and Stephen approach jiu-jitsu less as something that sits apart from ordinary life than as something that has to evolve alongside it. Training can remain important without remaining unchanged. Competition can give way to coaching. Shared training can coexist with an individual relationship to the art. Time away does not have to mean the end of the practice.

For anyone thinking about BJJ longevity, returning after time away, balancing jiu-jitsu with parenthood or work, coaching, women in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, or the Montreal grappling scene, this conversation examines what staying with the art can actually require.

Recorded at Mizu Studio in Montreal, Quebec.

GUESTS

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mizumtl/ 

LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE

Website: www.grapplingmonthly.com 

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major

Subscribe and turn on notifications.

Nicholas Guillemette teaches full time at Team Evolution HQ in Gatineau, Quebec which is located in Canada's National Capital Region. He started at five, quit completely from sixteen to nineteen, and has trained full time since coming back.

Our conversation is one about finding your limits. Where they sit, how he found it, and what he will not spend to cross it. We talk training volume, lifting, what a heavyweight owes the room when he rolls at somebody else's gym. Why wrestling changed his competition nerves more than his results. Constraint games and drilling in his classes, and why he thinks the standard positional round teaches nothing. Nogi, gi, Pans in October, No-Gi Worlds in December, and the black belt he asked to postpone.

After talking to Nic, it is hard to tell he is only 24. Coaching at the academy his family built, and direct about the trade: teaching is selfless, competing is selfish, and he did both badly before he found a split that held. Recorded on site at Team Evolution HQ in Gatineau, Quebec.

GUEST:

Nicholas Guillemette

Team Evolution HQ 74 Boulv. Gréber Gatineau, Quebec

Website: www.artsmartiauxevolution.com

www.instagram/@nickyg_bjj  and www.instagram.com/@teamevolutionhq 

ABOUT GRAPPLING MONTHLY

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport. The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community.

The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications. IG: www.instagram.com/@grapplingmonthly 

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]

Professor King Osimco started jiu-jitsu in Iloilo, in the Panay region of the Philippines, at a point when there was no affiliated gym in his hometown and instruction came from downloaded videos.

He trained in the United Arab Emirates on a four-day emergency response rotation, riding two hours each way to reach a mat. He is now a black belt, one of the head coaches at Centre Evolution HQ in Gatineau, and the director of its Muay Thai and MMA programs. This conversation covers the whole route, we discuss: 

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications. IG: www.instagram.com/@grapplingmonthly 

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]