Dominic Dillon is a lifelong martial artist (having started his training with his dad at age 4!) and now holds black belts in kickboxing, Japanese Jiujitsu, Karate, and BJJ.
Dominic has also put his skills on the line in MMA and K-1 achieving high ranks in the UK competition scene.
After watching his Reverse Bulldog Choke instructional (which in my biased opinion, is incredible) I was excited to ask him a few questions.
1) Dominic, I understand you’ve been training martial arts since the young age of 4! How did you get started at such a young age?
I first started training martial arts as early as is possible as my dad taught aikido.
He even used to teach classes holding me as a baby.
So I have pretty much been on the mats my whole life!
2) As someone who has trained martial arts and competed in MMA how would you compare/contrast training and competing?
This is something I think and talk about often.
Training has to be divorced to some extent from our ego to give the best results in competing. The less that I’ve “tried to win” in training the more I’ve won when it counts!
Working bad positions going while tired so you get got even by less experienced and trying new moves are all parts of this.
I feel in Mma circles the separation of how to prepare is much better understood than in Bjj.
In Bjj I think there is a trap where people are trying to prove themselves every round and care about “winning” in the gym as much as comp sometimes.
I think this is the down side of our vague grading system and they feel they’re constantly being appraised and need to either show “they’re ready for the next belt” or “they’re worthy of their current belt”.
3) I really enjoyed your teaching on your Reverse Bulldog Choke instructional. I learned so much! From a seemingly simple move I can see there are a few key points to really make it work. How did you come to create this move?
I came up with it in my garage gym during lock down rolling with my main training partner of that time a tank of a man Amos Kashet.
Anyone who knows him knows he has one of the most defensively sounds games around and it was getting impossible to tap him with anything conventional and one day I was trying the Josh Barnett scarf hold neck crank and he escaped his arm and I just kept going with what I had left 😂
Soon realized I had something and started fine tuning and trying it with other training partners as other gyms opened up and each place I showed it people found it simple and effective and most of all very difficult to see coming and counter!
4) It never ceases to amaze me. Humans have been grappling for quite a few centuries, it just comes so natural for us to grapple. Yet, here we are in 2023 and there are still new ways being invented to strangle one another. Do you think there are a lot of new moves that will be developed?
I think people will constantly develop and even if won’t be a totally new move they’ll find a new way of doing old ones in a new way.
I think competing is the key as people will keep trying to innovate to gain advantage.
5) What are your goals that you are working towards?
My goals at the minute is testing out as many of my grappling innovations as possible in comps before my body is too broken to do this kind of thing.
I’d like to leave the sport having spread as many of my unconventional grappling techniques as possible.
I personally love the feeling of hitting a move on a black belt in comp and them saying after “I’ve never seen that before”
I’ve got few more things I’m working on that I’ll be excited to share in the near future.
Check out Dominic's innovative Reverse Bulldog Choke instructional on DVD HERE or On Demand here!
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