North County Instructors Win Big at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Tournament [Video Clip]

Editor’s note: The first video has highlights from Hopkins’ matches and the other three are full videos of matches.

Two north county martial artists had significant wins at the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation’s World Jiu-Jitsu No-Gi Championship in Long Beach Sunday.

Carlsbad resident Mark Hopkins, owner of Dojo Americana in Oceanside, won first place in the senior 3 black belt division in the middleweight category and second place in the open weight category.

Michio Grubbs, of Excel Jiu-Jitsu in Oceanside, won first place in Men's black belt senior 3 in the lightweight division and third place in the open weight division.

Hopkin’s first match quickly went to the ground and Hopkins submitted his opponent with an arm bar within about three minutes.

“(Winning) felt good,” the 48-year-old black belt said. “It was a good tournament.”

He and Grubbs—who had trained together as early in their careers, according to Hopkins—competed in the open weight division. Their match was fought mainly on foot and Hopkins won on points.

Hopkins last competed in 2005 and his recent victories have him thinking of the Pan-American Championships in April.

 “It definitely motivated me to try other tournaments,” he said, adding that he hopes more athletes in his division sign up for that tournament to “make it a real competitive division.”

(Full Disclosure: Editor Daniel Woolfolk trains at Dojo Americana.)