Chris Ong is a BJJ black belt from Essex UK and trains under well known British competitor Andy Roberts. Best known for his viral instagram art under the handle ongy84, Chris regularly uploads various satirical cartoon style art to his legion of followers. A typical example is displayed below.
Chris first started his BJJ training at 21 years old when he was watching UFC in 2004 and thought he would give it a try the following year. After around 12 years of training Chris received his black belt in 2017.
An avid guard player, Chris says that perhaps his biggest weakness in his grappling game are his takedowns. From the bottom Chris likes to play a variety of guards including the more modern K-guard to enter various leg attacks. This style has been influenced by one of his grappling idols, the well-loved competitor Lachlan Giles.
It comes as no surprise then, when asked about his favourite submissions Chris replied “the inside heel hook & straight footlock”, both of which can be entered from K-guard.
When looking toward the future, like many of us Chris does not have big competition goals and instead sets his goals based more on lifestyle and wellbeing. “To stay fit and healthy, I have a dream to potentially start my own BJJ brand, but I think that is a long way off!”
Artwork
Chris has been drawing from an early age, like most artists, his journey began as more of a hobby than anything else. When browsing youtube one day he came accross a program which allowed him to transfer his freehand art on to a computer. This would then allow him to colour digitally, rather than by hand. The positive response he has received from the BJJ community has allowed him to continue to draw in his own style and put his ideas on paper, many of which are cartoons from his upbringing.
When asked about where he gets all of these ideas from, Chris states “I get ideas randomly most of the time”. He claims his list of ideas is currently over 1000 long. We can expect a lot more cartoons from him in the future and he will not be running out of images any time soon.
His most proud piece is the featured Leonardo Da Vinci Vitruvian Man from 2016. This idea had been sitting in the head of Chris for many years until it was put on to paper. The result from publishing was from only having 50 followers, to becoming a viral hit on instagram. However, an all too familiar story was that larger accounts had reposted the work and not bothered to give any credit. This did not deter the talented artist though, as he has since achieved almost 30000 followers and continues to grow.
If you are impressed by the art of ongy84 please support him by purchasing a t-shirt from his website linked below. To clarify, we are not affiliated with him and do not make any money from this link.
https://www.legacycreativeuk.com/category/ongy84-designs
