Dan Of Earth

My name is Dan. I’m 37 years old and have a beautiful wife, a beautiful daughter and an awesome son. I am a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Brown Belt at Neutral Ground in Grafton, WI under Black belt Perry Wirth. I am also an Analyst, photographer, and graphic designer. There are way too many things in life that I love so I choose to do them all. My first love was skateboarding, and recently started skating again. I feel like basically every moment of my life revolves around BJJ in someway.

I began my BJJ training in August of 2011 at Empyreal Martial Arts in Mary Esther, Florida under Michael Donvito, a Carlos Machado 4th Degree Black Belt. I had some brief exposure doing Army Combatives when I was deployed to Iraq in 2010 as an army units embedded Air Force personnel. My good friend Shon told me to try the Gi and when I finally tried it I never looked back. Here I learned amazing fundamentals and methodology for analyzing my training.

I then trained under David “Rock” Jacobs in Fairfax, Virginia where I earned my blue belt in October of 2012 before moving to Wisconsin in July of 2013. Dave taught me a lot about how to conduct yourself as a coach and leader. Whenever something happened in our community, Dave would always be on the morally correct side of things and would be vocal about it.  He was always down to roll and share his love for grappling with everyone else. He can also wristlock a Hippo from 5 yards away from just looking at it.

-Dan