The Man Who Runs a Thousand-Person Tournament—and Tells You Not to Run One in Your Gym
Jorge Britto founded a tournament that fills fourteen mats with more than a thousand people. Ask him whether gym owners should run their own in-house events and he pushes back—the room where your students feel safe is worth more than the couple hundred dollars a bracket makes you.
Starring
Jorge Britto is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, promoted by Saulo Ribeiro and Vinicius "Vini" Aieta at Gracie Tijuca in Rio. He has a degree in physical education, fought professionally in MMA, and won the ADCC European Trials in 2010. He has taught in Toronto since May 2008, co-founded the Jiu-Jitsu For Life Team in 2016, and runs NextGen.
About the Gym
Etobicoke BJJ is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu academy on Lake Shore Blvd West in Etobicoke, Toronto, training about 250 members. Jorge Britto opened it around 2023 alongside Toronto BJJ, the Bloor Street flagship where he's been head instructor since May 2008 and still teaches. Both belong to the Jiu-Jitsu For Life Team, co-founded October 2016 with Josh Rapport.
Programs cover adult gi jiu-jitsu with a competition team, kids' classes, and a light-touch self-defense component—Britto holds that consistent training and the emotional control competition builds protect a student better than a self-defense curriculum.
Britto founded the NextGen tournament, and asked whether competition works as a retention tool, he answers "100%." His measure of success is students who arrive as white belts, leave as black belts, and open their own academies—two were doing that within two months of filming.
📍 Address: 2918 Lake Shore Blvd West, Toronto, ON M8V 1J4, Canada
📞 Phone: (647) 983-7108
Summary
This one starts off the mats. Gymdesk CEO Alex Cuevas entered his first jiu-jitsu tournament at 49, alongside his son, at the tenth anniversary of Britto's NextGen event—and won his division. Days later he sat down with the man who built it.
Britto grew up in Rio de Janeiro and landed at Gracie Tijuca, a Gracie Humaitá branch he calls "the Disneyland of Jiu-Jitsu." As a teenager he washed visiting athletes' gis at Worlds camps to pay his own membership. He reached Toronto in May 2008, has taught at Toronto BJJ for the seventeen years since, and opened Etobicoke BJJ about three years ago.
The interview lands somewhere counter-intuitive. Britto ran in-house tournaments himself, but only as rehearsals to train his event staff before going public. Turning your gym into a competition venue, he argues, costs more in comfort than it earns in entry fees.
