Olsen Behring Vale Tudo/MMA

Hamilton

Belgrade

Big Sky

Butte

Billings

Bozeman

Corvallis

helena

Kalispell

Missoula

Red Lodge

Stevensville

Whitefish

Great Falls

Bigfork

Livingston

Montana Mixed Martial Arts in Bozeman opened in 1998, making it almost certainly the oldest BJJ school in the state. Its lineage runs directly through Grand Master Flavio Behring, whose own instruction came from Helio Gracie and João Alberto Barreto — about as traditional a line as you can find outside of Brazil. That the school has operated continuously from a 1998 start date, in a city of roughly 50,000 people tucked against the Gallatin Valley, tells you something about how seriously Bozeman has always taken grappling.

The northeastern anchor of the state is Billings, and the dominant force there is The Grindhouse, run by Will Grundhauser — a 3rd-degree black belt, ADCC Masters World Champion, nine-time Grapplers Quest No-Gi Advanced champion, and seven-time Fight to Win national champion with an undefeated professional MMA record. Grundhauser built The Grindhouse into a network that extends well past Billings: Red Lodge Grindhouse to the southwest, Honey Badger BJJ in Miles City to the east, a location in Glasgow in the northeast corner, and Solid Ground MMA in Roundup. That reach across genuinely sparse geography is unusual for any state, and it means rural Montanans who might otherwise have no access to quality grappling instruction have a legitimate option. Red Lodge Grindhouse Jiu Jitsu, the affiliate most visible to travelers heading into the Beartooth Range, teaches the same blend of wrestling, kickboxing, and jiu-jitsu the Billings mothership is built on.

The northwest corner is SBG Montana territory. Travis Davison — a 3rd-degree black belt and the first person to receive every one of his belts from SBG International founder Matt Thornton — opened the Kalispell location in December 2008 alongside his wife Kisa, a brown belt under Thornton. What started as one gym has grown to six locations: Kalispell, Whitefish, Bigfork, Polson, Missoula, and Bozeman. The network competes seriously. In April 2019, SBG Montana sent 43 athletes to the Northwest Submission Challenge in Boise and returned with 20 gold, 21 silver, and 17 bronze medals. Coach Leah Taylor won gold in the black belt division at the IBJJF World Masters in Las Vegas that same year. Also operating in the Flathead Valley is Absolute Fight Factory in Kalispell, where Rob McCaskill — a black belt who earned his rank in 1998 under Nova União lineage through John Lewis and also trained with Rigan Machado, Andre Pederneiras, and Pedro Sauer — has been running programs that cover BJJ, Muay Thai, and MMA.

Missoula, the state's university town, developed its own independent academies in the 2010s. Bradley Lehuta, a Hellgate High School wrestling alum and eight-year Navy veteran, founded Missoula Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in 2014 specifically to build a curriculum-driven alternative to the typical fight-gym environment. Zoo Brazilian Jiu Jitsu followed in 2015. In Butte, Grit Training Center — run by professional MMA fighter Sam Rauch — serves the southwest of the state. For anyone traveling between cities, or newly relocated to Montana, MatMade lists 33 gyms across the state, giving a reliable way to find what's available in any given corridor.

The character of training in Montana trends practical. A wrestling culture that runs from high school through adulthood gives most gyms a ready-made base of athletes who are already comfortable on the mat and skeptical of anything that doesn't work under pressure. Gyms here tend not to be hobbyist boutiques. The distances between cities — Billings to Kalispell is four and a half hours — mean that most Montana practitioners train close to home and drive far for tournaments, which makes regional competition trips a collective event rather than a solo exercise. Newcomers to the state will generally find instructors who are willing to explain what they're doing and why, and training partners who won't mistake unfamiliarity with weakness.

BJJ & Martial Arts in Hamilton, Montana