Drew Weatherhead is a Canadian grappler from Alberta, Canada just north of Red Deer. He began training aged 24. His entry into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is similar to many, as he says “I took previous martial arts late in my teens and early 20s. One of my friends used to cross train a bit of Jiu-jitsu and challenged me to a back yard roll. I was hooked after that one experience and looked up a local gym the next day”. Since then he achieved the rank of black belt aged 36 years old under Professor Dave Rothwell and runs his own gym Central Alberta Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. In terms of the most influential on his style – he adds Ryan Hall, Caio Terra, Robert Drysdale, Rafa Mendes and Keenan Cornelius as the biggest influences.
We asked him what his favourite positions are in BJJ and this was his response: “I play a lot of open guard. Though not a very particular orientation. I’ll often start with a shallow half with one leg and let my three other limbs wander depending on what’s going on. I’m always a fan of the classics. Scissor, Flower and Hip Bump sweeps. I used to use a lot of fast pass styled passes. Now I’m playing a lot more mid range pressure stuff, I use a LOT of different submissions, but would consider my most honed weapon the armbar”
Usually competing at lightweight, we asked about his biggest competition achievements to which he answered “I’ve won a few local Superfights and took Provincial Gold at Brown Belt Adult lightweight”
These days, Weatherhead is more of a teacher rather than a competitor and claims “I’m going heavily into the Tutorial Series’ at present and have plans to release a full member site to the public in 2021!”
Speaking of which – one of his most interesting positions is the reverse kimura, which is almost a modified arm-drag. We asked him about its origins and his opinions on the move to which he said: “I actually came across it originally as a purple belt. I found an old video of me doing it in 2011 with a friend. But more recently had started playing with it for about 10 or 12 months before the release of the first series from Close Guard. Besides all of the obvious back takes that stem from the grip, I started lab testing a bunch of other techniques and pathways available with it. So much so, that I came out with two full length series showing uses and options from both the Closed and the Half Guard.”
Not only this, but Weatherhead is also quite known for his funny memes online which also adds to his digital presence. This was quite interesting to us as he didn’t seem like the typical demographic for someone to pump out comedy BJJ memes. Regarding this he mentioned “Are you saying I’m old? And they are not only a successful medium online as viral content, but have and are presently used to inform pop culture in a way that advertisers from the 1990s would sell their firstborn for! All that aside, though, I just love making them, and appear to be pretty good at it too. So it’s worked out well.”
Another interesting part of his story is his background in organising grappling events and competitions in his home country of Canada. We discussed this in relation to parts of Canada banning competitions and whether this impacted him, to which he said “There was a point of time in Ontario where the Provincial government tried to regulate Jiu-jitsu competition. But it was fully tied to a political money grab by a Karate group in the Province that gets very messy when you hear the whole story. Nothing was ever brought to any type of Federal level. So, no. It’s never affected me in Alberta. I’ve been running Jiu-jitsu Tournaments for the past 9 years in Alberta and presently hold the Largest Submission Only competitions in Western Canada 4 times a year (pre-Covid of course).”
In relation to this, we then asked about the financial and logistical issues of running a competition. Weatherhead mentioned: “The answer is you have to get good at both. And either can sink you if you don’t [learn both finances and logistics]. If you don’t make back your investment (which is often in the 5 digits), the difference comes out of your own pocket. As a family man, that hurts. But if you don’t run efficiently, people won’t support the next one, which then becomes the former problem. And so on and so forth. So in promoting, much like in sports, you’re only as good as your previous event.”
Finally, Weatherhead can be found at @Because_Jitsu and @Drew.Weatherhead on Instagram. To find his instructionals head to www.Because-Jitsu.com
