Tas BJJ History Project

I recently heard the term “Australian Martial Arts Legend” used to describe a successful martial arts competitor. While I acknowledge that this is a subjective term, I wasn’t sure that it matched up to what I would define as a “legend”. To me a legend is a creator or a pioneer. Names like Bob Jones, Richard Norton, Dale Eagling, Jan de Jong come to mind. As far as legends who immigrated to Australia; Tino Ceberano, Sung Soo Lee, Johnny Koay and Len Scambler are also significant names. Another name that absolutely belongs on this list, both for his dedication and his contribution is lifelong Australian Martial Artist, John Will. It is not my intention to be John Will’s biographer - as with most things, he both would and has done that better than me. You can read his story in his auto-biographical Rogue Black Belt series. However I will give you a little back ground as it relates to the Tasmanian story.

John Will was born in 1957 and was always one of those people who were considered to be “different”. While some I am sure, said this in a pejorative sense, John was the kind of different that stands in front of the pack not behind it. From a young age John was drawn to martial arts and during his formative years trained in Freestyle Wrestling, Goju Kai Karate and Tae Kwon Do. Then, upon finishing school, John followed in the footsteps of his martial arts inspiration, Donn Draegar, and travelled to South East Asia to train in as many styles as he could. John’s training and travelling both generated a need for income and an opportunity to generate it. The stories and experiences that John gathered were the starting point for the martial arts magazine that he built from the ground up, a magazine that is bigger than ever today, Blitz. Training, travelling and writing for Blitz took John to Japan, China, Thailand, India and the USA over the next eight years. This time was capped by John becoming the first westerner to win the World Silat Championships in Indonesia and to be awarded a black belt in Silat.

The first glimpse of BJJ John got was in the mid-1980s on an old VHS tape featuring the classic Rickson Gracie vs Zulu fight. Curious, John decided to head to the states and check it out, so he spent a week training with Rorion Gracie in his garage in Torrance. On the last day of his training, which was in the form of private lessons, Rorian asked Rigan Machado to replace him as teacher as he had conflicting plans for the day. Rigan was the Brazilian Open Champion at the time and was also the first of 5 brothers, all champions, to head to America. John and Rigan hit it off really well and after a few trips over to Los Angeles to train with him, he suggested that John go with him to Brazil; which is an offer that John jumped at!

John’s relationship with Rigan and his brothers and regular training trips to the United States and Brazil gave John the foundation to build himself into a technical Jiu Jitsu exponent. Then the same drive and tenacity that took him round the world, won a world championship and built a magazine, soon turned into a national organisation of schools training in BJJ under John’s close tutelage. John’s vision allowed Jiu Jitsu to propagate and grow throughout Australia via a network of schools he could teach via a seminar circuit and also support through his popular series of books on BJJ.

On the 17th of August 1996, Tasmania experienced Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for the first time. John, a Brown Belt in BJJ at the time (John was Australia’s first Purple, Brown and Black Belt in BJJ, but not Blue as Rigan promoted John directly from White to Purple Belt) organised a seminar with Noel Peters who was the instructor of Hobart Goju Kai Karate. Noel had met John at a seminar that John conducted at the Goju Kai Honbu in Melbourne and been impressed with the techniques and John’s coaching ability. This seminar was attended by several people who would go on to be significant drivers in the Tasmanian BJJ story, Adam Newton, Jeremy T’Akody, Peter Rogers and Noel Peters to name a few. The seminar was featured in the first edition of, what was at the time a Tasmanian Martial Arts magazine, called “The Martial Artist”. A copy of this article has survived the last 20 years, preserved by Peter Rogers. 

The article quotes John Will as saying “I believe in hard work and constant training, not raw talent. Raw talent only gets you so far.” This certainly set the tone for the development of BJJ in Tasmania. Through regular seminars over the next few years John introduced more people to BJJ and the hard work and diligence of these people built the scene that we know today. 

When I asked John for his feelings on the Tasmanian scene he commented that the experience of Tasmanians mirrored his own in a lot of ways. As a pioneer of BJJ, John had to fly to the United States and Brazil to train and then bring back his knowledge to Australia. His isolation required dedication and creativity to memorise the invaluable (and expensive) lessons he was receiving. Tasmanian’s have always had a similar isolation from their mainland brethren and as such develop a strong independence and will of their own.

Isolation was a lot more real in 1996 than it is today: at that time the internet either didn’t exist in Tasmania or was rare and even if you had it, there was little content to be accessed. Imagine a world with few websites on BJJ, no YouTube and no online resources available - students at that time literally only had what they were taught or developed themselves. I personally remember fondly finding BJJ.org, one of the first BJJ related websites on the internet, with tiny pixelated videos of various techniques that took hours to download over a slow dial up connection. These were worth more than gold in a world where new insights were limited.

One of the first people to regularly include BJJ in his existing martial arts classes was Paul Burn from Launceston. Paul’s club, Breakaway Martial Arts (later Fleet Feet Martial Arts) became the first Launceston-based associate of BJJ Australia. Paul’s first experience of BJJ was attending John Will’s second Tasmanian seminar, held at the Clarence PCYC in 1997. Impressed by this experience, Paul traveled to Geelong to train with John for a week as soon as could. It was on this training trip that Paul affiliated with John.

Over the following few years Paul hosted John for 4 or 5 seminars in Launceston. In most cases this meant a seminar on a Saturday in Launceston and then a drive to Hobart to conduct a seminar on the Sunday. In those early days, Paul did not own jigsaw mats as his training was primarily in stand up styles. So those seminars were conducted on rectangular gymnastic mats that had to be taped together before each session. The content, and indeed concept, of ground fighting was so new to Paul at the time that John demonstrated the entire Blue Belt syllabus for Paul so they could film it on VHS as a reference for their training.

It was apparent to Paul that John had a holistic vision of martial arts, but also understood that in order to help create a field of reference for primarily “stand up” trained martial artists he would need to work in areas they were familiar with. As such most seminars would include 20 minutes or so of striking techniques and defence as well as BJJ ground techniques. Because the students were largely learning to grapple from scratch, John gave affiliates particular moves or positions that they were to practice until the next seminar. In fact in some cases they were instructed to complete a set number of repetitions of certain techniques, for example “complete 5000 repetitions of Armbar from Mount by the next seminar”. Rolling was also conducted in a progressive manner, with affiliates being told when they were allowed to start to grapple for position only and then when they were allowed to roll for submission.

As with anything that challenged the existing paradigm, a lot of people were confronted by the idea of grappling and so Paul found it hard to attract people to seminars that he hosted. It wasn’t uncommon in the early days to only have 20 attendees at a seminar and most of those were Paul’s own students.

A common trend among early BJJ students in Tasmania was previous martial arts back grounds and often Black Belt ranks. Paul Burn was a 2nd Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do as well as having Hapkido and Boxing experience. Another experienced martial artist to train in BJJ early was Pete Rogers who was a 3rd degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do from Hobart. Pete was a Muay Thai student of Adam Newton who would ultimately go on to be the main driving force in the early development of BJJ in Tasmania.

Prior to the initial seminar that John Will delivered in 1996 Pete had only heard of BJJ, although at the time he didn’t know what it was. Through his work as a trainer with the Tasmanian Police Service, Pete met an Australian Protective Services trainer who mentioned the defensive tactics courses being run by Dan Inosanto in the United States and a “Machado” thing as part of this. Of course at the time Pete didn’t know that this referred to the five Machado Brothers who were among the best BJJ practitioners in the world, not to mention the coaches of John Will.

Pete’s next introduction to the “Machado Thing” was on the 17th of August 1996 when he, Adam Newton and various others attended John Will’s first seminar. Pete explained that following this initial seminar a “loose group” of grapplers started to train together. Both Adam Newton and Jeremy T’Akody started practicing BJJ in their existing classes. Adam in the Bridgwater PCYC Muay Thai club and Jeremy through his Rhee Tae Kwon Do classes. They also began to train BJJ specifically at the Hobart PCYC, names such as Adam Newton, Clancy Roberts, Pete Rogers, Billy Burton, John Pugh and Sandy Gale were often there.

This early time of development and experimentation was helped out by regular training trips to John Will’s academy in Geelong. Adam, Jeremy, Clancy and Pete all made early trips to learn what they could and bring back new knowledge to share. Pete made his first trip to Geelong in mid-1997 for a week of training and included several private lessons with John in his home.

During 1997 and into 1998 several distinct BJJ groups started to emerge; in Hobart, Adam Newton’s Bridgewater PCYC group as well as the new Hobart University club, which formed when Jeremy T’akody relocated his Tae Kwon Do classes there from New Town. In Launceston, Paul Burn’s Breakaway Martial Arts was also joined by Jim Fisher’s Wing Chun group at the Launceston PCYC training in BJJ on Friday nights.

Also in 1997 a former student of Elizabeth College’s Athlete Development Program, started to operate a self defence class out of the college, his name was Arpad Tapp. Arpad was an attendee at the second seminar John Will held in Tasmania, at the Clarence PCYC and he met Jeremy T’akody there. At the end of the seminar he told Jeremy he would see him at this next class, but didn’t think that Jeremy believed him because people can be quick to promise things like that. However, Arpad did show up at Jeremy’s class, and continued to attend every lesson. Arpad continued to train with Jeremy following his relocation to the University of Tasmania Dojo. I will speak more about Arpad in a later chapter as he moved to Launceston in late 1999 to study Human Movement at the University of Tasmania there and became an important part of the BJJ story in the states north.

Training really was difficult in the early days, because material was hard to come by. As I mentioned previously there were no online resources available and new techniques only came from contact with John Will. Recognising this as a problem everywhere John published several books on BJJ, some of the earliest written by anyone. Adam, Clancy and Billy bought a copy of the second book “The Guard” and immersed themselves in it. From this book they learned to submit people from their back and to sweep for top position. Adam had a strong judo back ground, so understood submissions like arm locks and chokes and readily added John Will’s wrestling style takedowns to his Judo game.

During this period Adam ran two classes each week for two hours at a time. Classes were a mix of Muay Thai and BJJ, the first hour was of Muay Thai; half drilling, half sparring. Then it was off with the shin guards and wraps and on with the gi for an hour of BJJ, once again half drilling and half sparring. During this period Billy Burton started to run Wednesday night class at the Hobart University Dojo and an open mat on Sunday afternoons. This allowed for training in BJJ four times a week in Hobart and many people trained together.

It wasn’t long after BJJ was introduced to Tasmania that the first competitions were organised. All it took was a critical mass of competitors. While the exact date of the first comp is sadly lost in the sands of time it is generally agreed that it occurred in late 1998. Adam Newton, coming from a competitive back ground of Judo and Muay Thai saw the need to run competitions early on and organised this event at the Bridgewater PCYC. Even though all competitors at this time were technically part of John Will’s “Will-Machado” team, there were at least 3 or 4 different clubs represented. This included Billy Burton’s Hobart University club, Jim Fisher’s Launceston PCYC Wing Chun Club, Paul Burn’s Breakaway Martial Arts and of course Adam Newton’s Bridgewater PCYC group.

The competition style in those days was quite different to what people would recognise as sports BJJ now. While in hindsight the current rule set largely existed in those days, it wasn’t regularly used in Australia and certainly wasn’t in Tasmania. These events were heavily submission focussed and only points were awarded: advantages were never heard off. In fact it wasn’t unusual after a points victory to hear someone say “You won, but you didn’t really beat the guy.” Another difference to current IBJJF rules was that these events were almost universally in round robin format to give the greatest experience to each competitor. In a lot of ways these early events were a good excuse for cross training in what was a very cooperative environment.

Even though, the first competition in Tasmania was in 1998, John Will was already running the BJJ Australia National Championships which were held in Geelong at this time prior to growing large enough to be held at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre. The “Nationals” became something of a pilgrimage for Tasmanian’s who would travel as a team to compete and to spend a week training in some of the bigger gyms in Melbourne. This training was done at “Black Belt Studios”, John Will’s HQ in Geelong or at some of Melbourne’s large gyms such as Hangar 4 or Dominance Mixed Martial Arts. During this time the Australian Federation of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, under Peter de Been, also ran several competitions including the Pan Pacific Championships and the Victorian State Titles all of which were a magnet for Tasmanian competitors.

As Jiu Jitsu grew in momentum in Tasmania, competitors from Tasmania, "The Tasmaniacs", started to be noticed nationally as well. As such the next chapter of this story will be released soon and will focus on Tasmania's first Blue Belt and what the rank structure of BJJ is all about.