Any talk of opening a 10P Utah?

[BJ Searle]

I'm from Ogden, I don't really feel like Horn has all that much business, both unified and absolute are awesome clubs, but I feel like if we got a few ronins together and went and tore up the Champion Grappler submission tourney right before a soft open or something and spread the word the power of 10P and Eddie's rep could corner thr market from horn etc. Maybe do a couple seminars with Eddie, Einstein, Denny etc to get the ball rolling and at least get people to come through the door. Like I said I'm just snowballing right now. Glad to see some Utah lovr on the forums though!!

[Gray]

Champion Grappler went under awhile ago.

Horn's is pretty busy, not as big as Unified or Absolute when I've gone there but not dead either.

[BJ Searle]

Really? So no more sub only in Utah or did someone rise up?

[Gray]

No more tournaments really. There's one through USAW, but I heard it isn't that great

[Jack Hanley]

Full disclosure: I trained at Horn's off and on from like 2005-2010.

Yeah, Horn's may not be as commercially oriented as some of the other gyms (less focus on fitness type classes to draw in the lucrative housewife and kid demographics), but his gym has a pretty significant draw on all the no-gi guys in SLC more oriented toward MMA. As you probably know,the local MMA scene in Salt Lake has a long and prolific history (UCE, Steelfist, Showdown, and etc). But, comparatively, the no-gi competition scene has historically been VERY weak. This has been compounded by the fact that Champions Challenge seems to have died in the last 9 months. With all of that, a pretty significant percentage of the 100% no-gi guys are aiming towards MMA and a decent amount of those guys gravitate towards Horn's (along with Mushin, Kingdom, Blackout, Pit Elevated, and the others). Then, the gi guys all go to Unified, Absolute, MTI, Fusion, and etc.

As far as I know, we are the only gym in SLC that is 100% no-gi and focused 100% on no-gi competition instead of MMA. Everybody else is either mainly about MMA or mainly about the gi/IBJJF.

Yeah, we would love to get Denny or Eddie out here for a seminar when it is economically feasible. As soon as we opened our club in September 2012 (we ran the grappling club at the Univ. of Utah for like 8 years before that), we emailed Eddie about seminars and affiliation and gave him our bios, competition history, and the information on the club we were opening. He gave us some good feedback on steps for affiliation and etc.

But, were basically pioneering the concept of a 100% no-gi gym aimed totally at no-gi comps (not MMA) in Salt Lake. On top of that, our gym (by design) is very small in terms of square footage and has very low overhead. You will not find weights, kettlebells, tractor tires, or crossfit classes at SLGC. We don't even allow children (obviously a big revenue center at many gyms). It is a small gym with mats where grappling happens five nights per week and the members and instructors actually compete.

We were not at all sure if this new type of gym (at least for the area) would work. We definitely did not want to attempt affiliation and then embarrass the 10th Planet family if it turned out that the gym failed. So, we held off on attempting to affiliate and just tried to grow the gym to a healthy level (in terms of both membership and competition participation) first.

Now, 1.5 years later, the gym is finally hitting certain initial benchmarks we laid out when we opened. We are still a small gym that does nothing but grappling. But, we are WAY busier than we were 12 months ago. We still have a LONG way to go before we will be happy, but maybe now is a good time to revisit some of the long term plans we discussed when we opened.

BJ, feel free to hit me up via PM and I will give you my contact info. I'm sure the other two owner/instructors of SLGC would agree that we are open to talk to anybody in 10th Planet about what role we might be able to play in the future of 10th Planet in Utah since we love 10thPJJ and are long time ronin.

We also have a podcast at www.whiskeyandchokes.blogspot.com if you want to get an idea of where we are coming from ideologically in relation to grappling. We have tried REALLY hard to use the podcast to raise awareness of 10th Planet and 100% no-gi training in Utah.

[BJ Searle]

Yeah, Blackout is who I trained with for the last 3 years. I'll be sure to PM though and we can see what the future holds

[Gray]

I have had many a match with Derek from Blackout, all going to OT lol

[BJ Searle]

Wilkerson? Lol that was my best friend and training partner, he's a brown now. He'll be at NAGA Vegas in march

[Gray]

Yeah thats where we usually matched up. White through Purple.

[Jack Hanley]

I just realized you guys are talking about this "Team Blackout" (http://ubcima.com/team.php ) and not "Blackout Jiu-Jitsu" (https://www.facebook.com/blackoutjiujitsu).

So, did you live in Vernal for a while, BJ?