Johnny Tama hails from Guayaquil, Ecuador and got into BJJ for self defense reasons. Like many, his entry into martial arts involved fighting, as he mentions “I started training BJJ at 16 years old after I was beaten up and didn’t know how to fight at all. I went to an MMA fight and saw professor Soluco finishing his fight with a Triangle, that’s when I knew I wanted to do Jiu Jitsu”. Since then, Tama has continued his BJJ journey and achieved his black belt at age 24 years old. Whilst at home, Tama still trains at Alliance in Ecuador under professor Fernando Soluco Di Piero. However, these days he lives and trains in San Diego.
On the mats, his favourite guard is a hybrid of reverse De La Riva and spider guard. From here he uses he over the head sweep and come-up sweep from sit-up guard. On top, he uses a combination of knee cuts, leg drags and torreando passes to get past his opponents. When submitting he favours armbars for the upper body and the Tama lock for the lower body, a move which he has a reputation for. The name of the Tama lock has sometimes been disputed by those who call it the Estima lock, to which Tama says “No one can say they invented BJJ or techniques, they just found them, or rediscovered them so yeah you can call it whatever you want, nowadays we live in a time where everything is branded”. What cannot be debated is his entry into the footlock which is definitely unique to Tama, here he describes the origins of the move: “After seeing one of my training partners getting submitted with an Estima lock I went to the lab and practiced until I found my own set up that starts from the waiter sweep to 7030 and then boom!”
When asked about the future of BJJ in Ecuador he is optimistic, claiming “Ecuador is well known in the BJJ community because of the number of talents we produce like Iturralde Bros., Raul Jimenez, Roberto Jimenez, Sebastian Guevara, there’s plenty of upcoming talents like Juan Pablo, Nicolas Lora and Sebastian Guevara”
Elsewhere, he lists Langhi, Cobrinha, Lepri, Clark Gracie and Kron Gracie as his biggest influences.
When competing, his biggest achievement to date is winning the nogi Worlds in 2018 and 2019 as black belt and to make it to the quarter-finals and open for Professor Lepri in the same year. With this said, he is considered as one of the best lightweight grapplers in the world when competing. However, like many top competitors, he’s had his fair share of injuries and says “My worst injury was tearing my LCL and PCL back in 2016”
Looking towards the future, Tama’s has other competition goals in his sights and wants to open his own gym, win Worlds in the gi, and ADCC. Away from grappling, he also wants to graduate from school. To learn more from Tama, feel free to check out his aggressive open guard system.
