About Us

Professor Aj started training in 2006 under his father Professor Alex. His first 2 years of training was out of their garage. While training in the garage it was only them 2 training for the first few weeks until people starting driving by and noticing what was going on. Fast forward  a few weeks later now  there is 20 people training in their garage and eventually building a solid competition team. Once the team started competing this is when Professor Aj new this is what he wanted to do full time. At the teams first competition they did great overall and Professor Aj placed 2nd in a 12 man bracket. While at the competition he realized one of the kids did not have a coach and offered to coach him. With very little coaching experience Professor jumped into his first coaching opportunity and felt great . Even though the child lost his match Professor gave him some motivational words and the child felt much better and was ready to compete again. And at that moment Professor found his new calling . He wanted to start teaching more then competing. He felt so much thrill and excitement for the competitors coaching them and seeing their success more than competing himself. He comes back to the academy next day and ask his father to guide him to start teaching classes. And that’s what they did. Few months later Professor is now teaching youth bjj classes and competing. Eventually professor decides to try something new, MMA. He literally gets a call from a promoter asking him to fight on 6 days notice. With no striking experience he hesitates to accept. Then talks to his father and they agree to take his first MMA fight on 6 days notice realizing the opponent is 1-0 but only has wrestling experience. Professor and his fathers mind set is train everyday likes it your last. With that said they were always ready for any last minute competitions. Reaching fight  day Professor ends up submitting his opponent second round with a rear naked choke. Although he won he didn’t like the whole MMA experience even thought he fought 3 more times after that and finishing his mma career with. 3-1 record with 3 submissions. After his last fight he decided to go into teaching full time. Last 14 years he has been teaching and the team has accomplished so much in that time frame from overall team award , getting invited to super fights and competing at the best competitions BJJ has to offer. One thing you will learn about Professor if you ever have the opportunity to train with him is he will do whatever it takes to help you reach your goals. 

  I started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu when I was 20, back in 2015. My first two years of training was under the tutelage of two blue belts and a purple belt, teaching out of a local boxing gym in Key Largo, Florida. We hopped around training in my front yard, our teammates living rooms, and whatever space we could lay some mats down to get our rolls in. I learned a lot of basic techniques and fundamentals from the higher belts in the group, and they even helped train me to compete several times independently of a legitimate team.

 I eventually learned that if I wanted to progress in rank and skill, I needed to start training under a black belt as they had. Through one of my friends, I eventually found my coach, AJ Rivero, teaching out of a gym in Homestead, Florida. 

  He showed jiu-jitsu in a way I never had seen before and I quickly grew to love his class and my new teammates. Eventually we moved location further north towards 1 Miami. The classes he ran there were even larger than before, and I felt myself being pushed every single time I stepped onto the mats. 

  My performance in competition improved, and I earned my blue belt within the next 2 years. Whenever I could, I got in touch with my old training partners and we would share our progress from different parts of town. 

  Now, we fast-forward to 2022. I'm a brand new purple belt and student of Coach AJ for over 5 years. Under his affiliation, I teach my own team named Bayside Jiu Jitsu in Key Largo. You can also find me working as one of AJ's assistant coaches for his prestigious competition team, Atlantis Jiu-Jitsu.