New Zealands Premier Grappling Circuit.

NZ Grappler was founded in 2006 by Ricardo Liborio BJJ Black Belt Steve Oliver, who is the son of legendary kiwi weight lifter Don Oliver and head ground coach for UFC fighter Mark Hunt.

New Zealand Grappler runs a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament circuit which has grown from one annual tournament in Auckland to ten tournaments a year all over the country. 

Our events intend to bring traditional martial arts values and moral codes to all generations by introducing them to a high-level competitive experience in a professional family orientated environment. 

We are a family run business based in West Auckland, we have a team of staff that are all like whanau to us. We make it a rule to only have people on our team that share the same family vision as we do.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a relatively new sport in New Zealand but thanks to organisations such as the UFC in America and One Championship in Asia shining light on sports such as BJJ we have experienced a huge amount of growth throughout New Zealand in the past 5 years.

There are now approximately 250 gyms nationwide with around 10,000 members. Mixed Martial Arts is now widely considered the fastest growing sport in the world. 

 Our tournament circuit offers grapplers the chance to put all of their hard work to the test. We are always looking to push the boundaries and find new ways to create an innovative, interactive and entertaining environment for our audiences at the venue and via live streaming on social media and our website. 

New Zealand tournament numbers are growing from a humble 150 competitors at our first tournament to now tipping the scales at 1000 competitors.

We are looking to create a competition circuit that is innovative and interactive that set’s the standard for tournaments nationally and pushes the boundaries for tournaments internationally. 

 We envision an event that utilises state of the art technology that see’s high levels of engagement from both spectator and competitor, using systems and processes that are leading the way for competition circuits all over the world.

Live streaming all events, action cameras on referee’s, interactive platforms and software that will track your entire BJJ history and rankings.

 Finally we see our tournaments as a place where people can test themselves in a professional world class circuit, but with a strong family focus. With growth, organisations can lose touch with their audience.

We are proud that we have such a strong connection with our audience and will continue to keep a strong grass roots connection with all our fighters and families.