John Will is the Black Belt responsible for the existence of BJJ NZ. John lives in Geelong Australia and travels to New Zealand 3-4 times a year.

John is a Black Belt under Rigan Machado and is head of BJJ Australia. www.bjj.com.au He has recently published an autobiography titled “Rouge Black Belt” which is available from the Rouge Black Belt site www.rogueblackbelt.com

John Will began his martial arts training in 1972. With a basic grounding in amateur wrestling, Goju Kai Karate and Tae kwon do.

The next twenty five years have seen him take more than 30 overseas training trips; including stints in Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, India, the U.S.A and Brazil.

His friendship with long-time training partner Richard Norton, opened many doors to him in the Unites States, that perhaps would have been closed to most people. So in the late 80’s, he began training with such notables as Benny Urquidez, Gene LeBell, Shuki Ron, Pete Cunningham, Rorion and Rickson Gracie and the Machado brothers.

In the late 80’s, a friendship with Rigan Machado allowed John to travel to and train in Brazil. There, he was exposed to a wide cross-section of Brazil’s best BJJ coaches, and so began his serious study of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He was finally awarded the rank of black belt by Rigan and Jean Jacques Machado in 1998; making him one of the ‘BJJ Dirty Dozen’, the first twelve non-Brazilian BJJ black belts in the world.

John travels to New Zealand 3-4 times a year to monitor and encourage the growth of the BJJ NZ clubs under his Will/Machado banner.