About Tatsujin Dojo
Tatsujin Dojo
Tatsujin Dojo was founded by Martijn de Jong in 1995. After becoming a black belt in Jiu Jitsu when he was seventeen, Martijn de Jong mastered other Martial Arts such as Kyokushin Karate (black belt), Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (black belt), Shooto, Dutch Kickboxing, Judo, Wrestling and Submission Fighting.
Because of his technical approach in Mixed Martial Arts during his active fighting career, Martijn was given the nickname ‘The Specialist’ by his manager. When he started his own Team, he called it “Tatsujin Dojo” which means “The Gym of The Specialist” in Japanese.
The Tatsujin Logo is build up out of three circles meeting in the middle. The three circles represent Strength, Focus and Positivity. It also represents the three phases of Mixed Martial Arts being: Striking, Takedowns and Ground Fighting’.
STRENGTH
- Unity is Strength
- Strength hand growth come only through continuous effort and struggle
- The resistance that you fight physically in the gym every day, will build a strong physique and character
FOCUS
- To be succesful in Martial Arts you must continuously dedicate yourself 100% to your training, diet and mental approach
- Rather than focussing on your potential failures, focus on the goals you will reach.
- In a fight, it is you and your opponent, nothing else. There was nothing before nor will there be anything after. Focus and live in the moment.
POSITIVITY
- There are no peaks without valleys, always stay positive no matter the situation, eventually the sun will shine!
- One smile can travel the world, be grateful, be positive, help others, we are alone.
- If you don’t believe in yourself, how can others believe in you? There are no positive results with negative thougths. You are great!
Biography of Martijn de Jong
He started Jiu Jitsu in 1987 at the age of 13. He became a black belt at the age of 17 and started to add Kyokushinkai Karate to became a black belt just 4 years later.
On his quest to become a complete fighter he started with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at Remco Pardoel’s gym in early 1995. Later that year, Martijn started teaching BJJ and MMA together with his long time training partner Saron Debets. Approximately 1 year later, World Champion Thaiboxing and Vale Tudo fighter Jan Lomulder joined the classes and Martijn started teaching him MMA while Jan taught him Thaiboxing.
Around the same time multiple times Dutch Champion Greco Roman Wrestling, Andy Jekel joined the team. While he got skilled in MMA, he taught Martijn all the details of Wrestling.
In 1996, Martijn fought his first MMA competitions in Holland. In 1997, after 3 wins, he got invited with a whole team of Dutch fighters to compete in Tokyo against a Japanese Team fight in “Japan Extreme Challenge Vale Tudo Open”. He won that against Taro Obata by arm bar in the first round.
After Martijn fought in Shooto Japan in 1999, The head promoter Mr. Sakamoto together with the president of the International Shooto Commission Mr Suzuki, asked Martijn to be the first representative of Shooto in Europe. He accepted this with great honor. He started to spread Shooto throughout Europe where up till date over 100 Shooto events are organized.
In 2000 Martijn fought Brazilian sensation “Jose Pele Landi-Jons”. He lost that fight but it put him on the radar of Team Golden Glory, who asked him to join the team which was about to start. It was the first professional management team in Europe consisting of the following fighters: Semmy Schilt, Gilbert Yvel, Alistair Overeem, Valentijn Overeem, Heath Herring and Martijn de Jong.
In 2004 Marko Leisten (ADCC World Federation President), asked Martijn to be the president of ADCC Holland. Annual events have been organized ever since.
Organizing Shooto events for some years, Martijn wanted to bring the sport to another level and with the help of Team Golden Glory he founded “GLORY” (then called “Ultimate Glory”) in 2006. It was a combination of Shooto / MMA fights with Kickboxing matches.
Bert van der Ryd joined the team in 2008 and together we organized “A Decade of Fights” in 2009, celebrating Golden Glory’s 10 years’ anniversary. A strong group of financial investors saw a lot of potential in GLORY and Golden Glory and bought those two companies in 2012 to bring it to an absolute extremely high level! Today GLORY is the biggest and most prestigious kickboxing league in the world.
After the sale Martijn stayed two more years with GLORY as a consultant before he moved on and pursued his passion MMA again.