All posts by Absolute MMA

Another end of year BJJ grading in the books and what a massive one it was! It was easily our biggest grading ever, with hundreds of people turning out to put their team mates through the gruelling physical test required to receive their next belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Firstly, congratulations to Maryanne Mullahy, Julian Beling and Brenton McKiterick for earning their Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belts!

A BJJ blackbelt is truly a monumental achievement. It’s thousands and thousands of hours of consistently pushing yourself to learn and develop, and then pressure-testing your techniques, physical abilities and mental fortitude against other trained opponents in fully live sparring. Less than 1% of all people who start BJJ will make it to the black belt. The hard training inevitably means that they have persisted through injury. A black belt has been beaten countless times but that very special determination and drive within them meant they always came back for more.

So again, congratulations to Maryanne Mullahy, Julian Beling and Brenton McKiterick!

Along with the black belt gradings, there were also a large number of people – too many to name – who earned their blue, purple and brown belts. Each belt is an acknowledgement of the huge effort you all put in to develop and better yourselves! Those belts were not given, they were earned! BJJ is not easy but that’s what makes it so rewarding!

Finally, thank you and congratulations to our head BJJ coaches Thiago Stefanutti and Lachlan Giles, along with the rest of our ever-growing team of coaches. Your students are a credit to your efforts!

Please be sure to check the timetables for the CBD and South Yarra over the next two weeks as a holiday timetable will be in effect from from December 21 until January 3.

Please note that CBD will be running a modified timetable from December 21 until January 2nd.

You can download a printable copy of the timetable here: https://absolutemma.com.au/downloads/holiday-timetable.pdf

Also please note that due to the grading this Saturday, December 19th, the 9.15AM Boxing FIT class with Pradeep will be running as usual but there will be no classes following that.

The first seminar for 2016 is only just around the corner! Clark Gracie coming to Absolute MMA!

Grandson of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu founder Carlos Gracie, Clark Gracie has established himself as one of the top grapplers of the legendary family.

Known for his omoplata game, Gracie is a Pan American Champion, World No-Gi Jiu-Jitsu Champion, 3x American National Champion and Grapplers Quest Champion.

Clark will be teaching a seminar for all levels at Absolute MMA Melbourne CBD on Sunday, January 10 from 2PM and a purple belt and above seminar on Monday, January 11 from 7PM.

To register for the CBD All Levels seminar, click here.
To register for the South Yarra purple belt and above seminar, click here.

A legendary performance by Absolute MMA South Yarra’s Lachlan Giles in the Eddie Bravo Invitational!

Lachlan went into the 16-man elimination comp as an unknown, the bookmakers listing him with the highest odds to win the tournament. With his performance today though he has certainly announced his arrival on the world stage!

He drew one of the favorites for the his first match, Eddie Bravo blackbelt Nathan Orchard. Lachlan managed to win after overtime, scoring 9 more seconds of “ride time” under the EBI rules!

In his next match he faced ADCC World Champion and current UFC fighter Rani Yahya, winning via armbar in under 5 minutes! For people who didn’t know Lachlan this would definitely be considered a massive upset but for us at home it’s something that we knew Lachlan had in him!

In the semi-final Lachlan faced tournament favorite Garry Tonon and unfortunately was submitted with a reverse triangle. Tonon went on to win his 3rd EBI tournament.

Well done Lachlan! An inspirational performance and one that puts Lachlan and Australian BJJ on the map!

What a weekend for the Absolute Fight Team! On Saturday we had a bunch of first-timers compete in the Adrenaline Novice MMA Competition. We had 8 guys looking to get matched on the day (although 2 weren’t able to get opponents) and there were some awesome performances including an Anderson Silva/Lyota Machida/Daniel LaRusso front kick KO!

On Sunday we had Jaz compete in his fourth amateur boxing bout in just 2 months, coming away with a fight of the day performance. In the end it was scored a draw but needing a definitive winner, the referee gave it to his opponent. Still, a great performance to cap off a great year!

Then on Sunday Night coach Erhan Gungor got a fantastic win over a more experienced, tough opponent, winning a judge’s decision!

Absolute South Yarra BJJ Coach Lachlan Giles leaves this weekend to go compete in the Eddie Bravo Invitational!

Get into South Yarra tonight to wish him luck! CBD team, if you’re not able to make it out to South Yarra join us after training tonight for a beer and a burger in his honour!

Check out Eddie talking about Lachlan from 7:20 in the EBI promo video!

What a weekend for the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu team! In the final major competition for the year, the IBJJF Melbourne International Open, we absolutely dominated and came away with the No-Gi and Gi team championships – more than doubling the points of second place in both cases!

There were so many outstanding results from individuals, too many to list, but the event highlight has to be coach Thiago Stefanutti taking out the Black Belt No-Gi Open Weight!

Thank you to everyone who competed and made this incredible result possible!

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]UFC 193 is now in the books and the event will go down in history as featuring one of the biggest upsets of all time – Holly Holm knocking out the face of women’s MMA, Ronda Rousey! A huge moment in MMA and the event was also a big one for Absolute MMA too as we welcomed the UFC to Melbourne for the first time!

The UFC 193 hype started for us with UFC President Dana White and the biggest star in MMA, Ronda Rousey visiting our Melbourne CBD headquarters to shoot an interview with A Current Affair! Dana and Ronda were in the gym for about an hour and we got a chance to have a good chat with both of them, watch Ronda throw around a reporter a bit and shoot some photos with them.

You can check out some of the footage of Ronda and Dana in the gym and the interviews in the video below![/vc_column_text]

[/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Next up we had UFC Women’s Strawweight Champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk in the gym to do some conditioning and then visit us again later do some more training and grappling with our own BJJ World Champion Livia Gluchowska.

Joanna’s conditioning training was unbelievable; she was really training as though she was fighting for her life! Afterwards she was always kind enough to hang around and take some photos with the guys in the gym. Knowing how nice she is, it was great to see her get another well-deserved win!

You can check out Joanna training at Absolute in UFC Embedded![/vc_column_text]

[/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]As always, it was a pleasure to have our good friends Dan Kelly and Jake Matthews in the gym to spar in our pro sessions. Seeing both guys really excel at this event and come away with huge wins was really special and we feel so privileged to have them training with us! A huge congratulations to both guys on career best performances!

Although the fight didn’t go his way, it was a pleasure to have Peter Sabotta visit us for a few weeks to train each day in preparation for his bout with Kyle Noke! Peter is really an outstanding grappler and he even brought in his coach, the legendary grappler Dean Lister for an amazing 3-hour seminar!

Next up we had #1 ranked UFC Strawweight and 3-time BJJ World Champion Claudinha Gadelha drop in to take part in our morning BJJ class! Just incredible that one of the very best fighters in the world would be humble enough to jump in with our members and do some training! Claudinha is likely to be the next challenger for Joanna’s title – that’ll be a hard one to watch for us now but it’s sure to be another great fight!

During fight week we also were lucky enough to have Hector Lombard and Valerie Letourneau in the gym to do some training for Valerie’s title fight with Joanna! It was really great to see Valerie execute all the techniques she practised while training with us in what was probably the best fight of UFC 193.

Our good friend Mark Hunt also dropped back in to Absolute a couple times to do some padwork before his rematch with Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva. I think quite a few of our members were pretty stunned when Mark just showed up to an open mat to hit some pads! It was pretty funny watching all of the guys spar when Mark was watching too – I think the intensity was raised a few notches! Mark also came back later in the week to sign some autographs and take some pictures with the 150-plus fans that came in to the gym!

The #2 flyweight in the world and UFC title challenger Joseph Benavidez visited us again to do a surprise private training session for one of our lucky members, Nina! Nina is hoping to have her first MMA bout soon so I’m sure it was amazing to learn from such a brilliant, technical fighter!

To cap off an amazing week, UFC 193 certainly delivered with nearly all of our favourite fighters getting huge wins plus that massive upset in the main event! A huge crew from the gym went to see the historic, record-breaking event and the excitement has rolled into gym this week, with massive numbers for all of our classes so far!

All in all, UFC 193 was one of the most exciting events in Absolute’s history![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

A great weekend for the Absolute boxing team! First up we had Tim, Sam and Seamus all fighting on Saturday and we came away with a win, draw and a loss while Jaz fought Sunday, winning via a lopsided decision.

Thanks to those who made it out to support the guys fighting and also to our boxing coach, Pradeep Singh Sihag for your tireless work with the team!