Rilion Gracie Ireland – BJJ/MMA club, based in Letterkenny & Donegal Town, took part in the prestige NAGA tournament, which was held for the first time in Ireland, on Sat 3rd Sept, and the club swept the board with numerous medals from the Gracie Elite Team.
The North American Grappling Association (NAGA) is an organization started in 1995 that holds Submission Grappling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournaments throughout North America and Europe.
NAGA is the largest submission grappling association in the world with over 200,000 participants world-wide, including some of the top submission grapplers and MMA fighters in the world.
NAGA grappling tournaments consist of Gi and No-Gi divisions.
No-Gi competitors compete under rules drafted by NAGA. Gi competitors compete under standardized International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu rules.
NAGA also promotes MMA events which they term Reality Fighting. Competitors in NAGA competitions are broken into weight divisions and skill levels. Skill levels are further divided into a two categories, Adults/Masters/Directors/Executives, and Children/Teens.
Gold medal winners were Mairead Coyle (Ramelton), TJ McMenamin (Convoy), and Stephen McGlynn (Ramelton) from the Letterkenny Club, & Gold medals also for William Timoney (Laghey) , & Emer Martin (Donegal Town) from the Donegal Town Club, to name a few.
There was numerous other silver & bronze from other competitors, ranging from the kids, adults, masters, & directors divisions. Rilion Gracie Ireland, is run by Ramelton native Brian “Barney” Coyle, himself a European Gold medalist at brown belt masters divison, and bronze world masters medallist.
The Letterkenny branch is Donegal’s only full time BJJ / MMA club. The Donegal Towns branch is run by Bryan Gorman of DT Fitness gym, whom is a European No-gi brown belt masters silver medallist. Both clubs run kids clubs, and beginners are always welcome. With the increased success of Conor McGergor & Joe Duffy, in the UFC, grappling & BJJ, is becoming more popular than ever before as part of any successful overall self defence art, and Donegal has one of the top teams in Ireland, for people to learn.
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