{"id":601455,"date":"2026-09-15T22:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T22:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/601455\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T22:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T22:04:11","slug":"on-the-up-jaye-rio-wins-brazilian-jiu-jitsu-gold-with-a-move-his-late-coach-taught-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/601455\/","title":{"rendered":"On The Up: Jaye Rio wins Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gold with a move his late coach taught him"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gi competitors wear a traditional heavy cotton jacket, pants and belt showing their rank. Competitors grab the fabric to hold, control or choke opponents.<\/p>\n

No-Gi competitors wear tight synthetic shirts and board shorts, forcing them to grip bodies and use underhooks, wrist ties and body locks.<\/p>\n

Competitors are separated into sex, belt, age and weight categories.<\/p>\n

Rio beat two fighters from Mongolia and Mexico to win gold, winning the first fight by Aoki lock (footlock) in the first minute and the second with a triangle chokehold submission.<\/p>\n

\"JayeJaye Rio, centre, stands atop the dais at the Sport Jiu-Jitsu International Federation World No-Gi Championship in Tokyo, Japan.<\/p>\n

He said the tournament was good fun and felt like any other once he hit the mats.<\/p>\n

Despite the gold medal, Rio said the lead-up to the tournament was the worst he\u2019d experienced after catching a winter illness that hit him hard.<\/p>\n

Losing his coach a month or so before the competition was mentally challenging to process.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It] felt good to go out there and just go hard though.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was Rio\u2019s first international medal at black belt level, but he said medals didn\u2019t mean a lot to him; it felt better to win the final with a move his coach was a specialist in.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy coach Damian Smith was a triangle specialist and taught me all I know about triangles, so when I felt the opening for one, I was thinking about him and all the times he\u2019d coached me at tournaments, [the] perfect way to end the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n

He thanked his team at Gracie Allegiance Ahuriri and Gracie Allegiance Team New Zealand, and his friends and training partners at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gyms in Hawke\u2019s Bay.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get nowhere in martial arts without good teammates and training partners,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe BJJ community in the bay is pretty tight-knit, so if you train long enough you\u2019ll end up getting to know most of the gyms around and the good people in them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JayeJaye Rio, left, with partner and fellow Gracie Allegiance Ahuriri coach Yukako Mori at the 2026 Sport Jiu-Jitsu International Federation World No-Gi Championship in Tokyo, Japan.<\/p>\n

Rio and his partner and fellow coach Yukako Mori were spending a few more weeks in Japan, seeing friends and getting more Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Judo training.<\/p>\n

He said that once back in Hawke\u2019s Bay he planned to continue training in Ahuriri and \u201ckeep having fun with Jiu-Jitsu\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAside from being a good way of learning some self-defence, it\u2019s an awesome way to stay active without feeling like it\u2019s a chore and it\u2019s a great way to make lifelong friends. Anyone is welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in media in the UK, Germany and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gi competitors wear a traditional heavy cotton jacket, pants and belt showing their rank. Competitors grab the fabric…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3221,9218,27274,1320,4596,634,127,1888,4241,296447,1976,16718,293,1019,296446,118706,4507,26019,4486,2683,111,139,69,90,106586,30646,213,4497,93954,223,810,6202,102],"class_list":["post-601455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-battling","tag-before","tag-brazilian","tag-coach","tag-competition","tag-death","tag-despite","tag-first","tag-gold","tag-grappler","tag-hawkes","tag-him","tag-his","tag-international","tag-jaye","tag-jiujitsu","tag-late","tag-medal","tag-month","tag-move","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-rio","tag-sickness","tag-sports","tag-start","tag-taught","tag-the","tag-up","tag-wins","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}