Meraz Avdoyan was born in Armenia and his ethnicity is Yezidi. He now lives in Kaiserslautern, Germany and grapples at Matrix BJJ Kaiserlautern. Here he trains under Rene Becker, Andreas Resch and MMA coach Tabeth Aga. It is also Resch who he lists as his most influential grappler. However, he was 20 when he first started Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and mentions his entry into the world of grappling: “Once I met a bodybuilder guy with my friend in our gym. He talked about BJJ, and I thought it is something like Aikido. So we got into a bet with my mate. He said if I will do more chin ups you go to try BJJ. So l lost the bet and went to try it. And after I got to BJJ class, I got tapped by a small guy who was my coach. So, I decided to stay and try to tap him. So, from this I ended up in BJJ”.
We asked him about his favourite positions in BJJ, he lists half guard when playing on the bottom and uses the sumi gaeshi shoulder crunch sweep to get to the top. Interestingly, his favourite submission is from the crucifix position. Typically competing at 97.9KG, Avdoyan made a name for himself at the ADCC European Trials where he achieved the gold medal in 2019 and says he learnt his old school style at his gym in Germany.
Avdoyan is also a humble competitor and when asked about his rise to prominence in grappling, he adds “I do not like attention. Being praised is not what I like.” He also has a background in Rugby and talked about the reason why Rugby players may not always translate to grapplers even with some similarities, he says “I played professional Rugby in the Russian federation Junior Team and for the German professional adults. Because Rugby is a group team sport and grappling is one man fight”
He is also gearing up for an upcoming MMA fight but also adds “Grappling is my choice of becoming successful. I prefer grappling because I invested my life into it.”
For more information, you can find his gym at https://matrix-bjj.de
