Ante Dzolic is a veteran BJJ practitioner from Cleveland, OH. He began training BJJ aged 23 back in 1999 and received his black belt at age 39. His reason for starting BJJ is similar to a lot of black belts who started back in the late 90’s, he explains, “I’ve studied martial arts my entire life. But everything I studied was standing based. The first UFC showed me the importance of grappling”.
Dzolic’s old school style can be seen with his approach to BJJ, claiming his favourite positions are the closed guard and top side control. He also favours the flower sweep from the closed guard as his best sweep. When on top, Dzolic likes to pressure pass and uses the double unders stack pass to get through his opponent’s guard. To finish his opponent he favours the Kimura submission.
Adding to his old school mentality, Dzolic looks up to the likes of Saulo Ribeiro, Pe De Pano and Rigan Machado as his biggest influences in grappling.
Training out of the Rio Pro gym under Jose Dias, his competition weight was 245lbs back in his competing days. Surprisingly, even though the hard years of martial arts experience Dzolic is relatively unscathed adding “I’ve been lucky. Minor knee, elbow and shoulder sprains. But nothing serious.” when asked about his injuries.
These days Dzolic can be found passing on his years of knowledge on the mats as he states, “I’m a teacher. That’s my calling and what gets me excited. Whether that be in person at our schools (Rio Pro BJJ) or online at BJJBasics.com I will continue to work on improving as a coach and to share this art that has been so good to me.”
He also has a philosophical approach to his training claiming his hardest opponent is “The room. I can’t tell you how often my students bring out the best in me and their teammates. Constantly evolving. Constantly pushing one another. It’s hard to live up to their example.”
As a final philosophical note, he also adds “Perseverance is such an important concept. Often, life and its challenges can be boiled down to something as simple as: If you just don’t quit. If you just keep going. You’ll often get to where you want to be. Maybe not as fast as you’d like. Maybe not in the manner you’d like. But you WILL get there and very little can be kept from you if you just don’t quit. So, don’t quit”. With his years of experience in the game, it’s hard to disagree with this mantra. You can also find his instructional DVD here.
