Florida-based black belt AJ Sousa is all signed up to compete in the Miami Open this weekend. But eagle-eyed jiu-jitsu fans might notice that he is registered under GF Team, and not Atos. 

Sousa received his black belt from his coach Pablo Popovitch. When Popovitch left the US and moved to Abu Dhabi, Sousa took over his gym and renamed it the AJ Sousa BJJ Academy. 

Until recently, Sousa competed under the Atos / Art of Jiu-Jitsu banner, competing at Copa Podio in January and the IBJJF Pans in March. That union has now come to an end, so we reached out to Sousa to find out what led to the change. 

FloGrappling: So looking at the list of entrants for the Miami Open, we noticed that you're registered under GF Team. Can you explain a little about why you're no longer representing Art of Jiu-Jitsu / Atos? 

AJ Sousa: Keep in mind that I am not just a competitor, but I am a gym owner also. We had been in discussions to affiliate with AOJ and Atos for about 7 months. The guys and (Angelica) at Atos are awesome.  However, there were some legal restrictions on us becoming affiliated that were beyond our control, and beyond the control of Atos and AOJ. We worked on the problem and waited for more than half a year.  

During that time, AOJ invited me to train and compete for the team. Rafa Mendes was particularly very welcoming. However, we were never ever able to overcome the legal problem - which specific problem I do not feel would be fair to discuss. Because we were unsure of whether we could affiliate, it seriously hurt my gym's business because we could not place large merchandise and branding orders without knowing what patch to put on them. In the business of gym ownership, if you do not sell gis, t-shirts, shorts, etc, you will go out of business. We explained this to Atos and AOJ, and they understood what was going on.


It sounds like it was a of business influencing your decision, and nothing to do with your feelings toward your coaches at AoJ. How are things between you now? 

I think that my correspondence with Atos and AOJ should remain private, but they know very well how I feel about the time that they gave to me. It is no secret how respected their team leaders and competitors are.  I am no exception to feeling that way about Gui, Rafa, Andre, and all of those guys. They're on the West Coast, and I'm here in Florida, so we didn't exactly have a chance to hug it out.



Following the news that you had to switch allegiance, how did you go about choosing the new team? What led to you going with GF Team? 

About 6 months ago, Victor Silverio moved to South Florida. Victor and I had become friends back on the Brown Belt Kumite in 2011, and my gym is one of those places where people from all academies feel free to come and train - so, Victor and I started training together. 

After a while, we were able to schedule a seminar with Julio Cesar when he came to visit Victor in the USA. I got to meet Master Julio, and found him to be the type of leader and man that I would want to be associated with. Because I was already in talks with Atos, I didn't mention anything about affiliation with Julio Cesar then. When we decided that the legal issue that was keeping us from affiliating with Atos was not going to go away, we had to make a decision - and it was an easy one. Life is about timing, you know? GFT has a great reputation; guys like Jake Mackenzie, and Ricardo Evangelista, Rodolfo Viera are genuine people. We feel like we want to be a part of that and bring our own style as well.

You've been running your own gym for a few years now, but has the switch in team affected your training opportunities? 

It remains to be seen if affiliating with GF Team will help, hurt, or change our training opportunities. The doors to my gym have always been open for just about every school and every fighter. Many of my close friends and competitors have trained here with me, even though they compete and train for other teams. I don't really expect that to change much. If it does, it does. I can't worry too much about who wants to train where with who, we're all just trying to get better, you know?

And there's another positive -- GF Team have got lots of guy at middleweight, but you'll be their only black belt lightweight competing at Worlds, right? 

As far as I know, I will be the only GF Team lightweight at worlds. They're stacked everywhere else. 

​AJ Sousa will compete in the 2016 IBJJF World Championships. Watch it exclusively here on FloGrappling