Rokas Leonavicius is from Panevezys, Lithuania. He claims “It used to be a very rough city, which partly inspired me to take up martial arts. It also makes me relate to Batman even more haha.” As has been widely documented on his Youtube channel, he originally got into martial arts through Aikido aged 14, but eventually started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu aged 23. As he puts it, “I got into Aikido as a friend invited me to try it out. I was already an Aikido instructor. One day a soldier dropped by my Dojo looking for BJJ. We became good friends and he ended up teaching me some Jits.”
These days, Rokas is a blue belt in BJJ which he earned age 29. In Aikido, he was technically a second degree black belt which he got aged 22. However, he also claims he would have been a third degree in the art at age 27, but never got the degree confirmed and then ended up leaving Aikido. He currently trains at SBG Portland with Matt Thornton, but also at A-Force whilst in Lithuania under Rokas Narusevicius.
Regarding Thornton and SBG he adds “I just have so much respect for Matt Thornton and I love his style. When I trained MMA at SBG Ireland I sparred with a UFC heavyweight fighter. Holy Shit that was scary! But he was very nice and didn’t knock me out haha, it was just scary as hell.”
Since joining BJJ, he claims his favorite sweep is the scissor sweep and prefers playing guard due to his long legs. On top, he uses pressure passing and his best submission is the armbar from head and arm control.
Also dabbling in MMA, he typically competes in BJJ around 81KG – and jokes he’s lost 3 out of his 4 BJJ competitions. However, if there’s one thing about Rokas it is his honesty, which can be seen in his early videos where he addressed the reality and effectiveness of Aikido compared to more aggressive martial arts. Having said this, his worst injury actually comes from Aikido as he says “I had some crazy upper spine thing happen due to Aikido high falls. I still feel it sometimes. Also a meniscus operation I guess was pretty crappy too.”
We asked Rokas to expand on his thoughts about leaving Aikido, which was well documented on Youtube at the time. In short, his video went viral when he tried to use Aikido against an MMA fighter during sparring. It wasn’t pretty to watch, but it was very honest and hadn’t been shown before.
Specifically, we asked him how he came to the realization about Aikido [being ineffective], he replied “It was a somewhat long and gradual process actually. There were key moments though. First of all, being introduced to BJJ by my new found friend. That’s actually how I discovered Jits. A NATO soldier stationed in the city where I was running my Aikido Dojo one time dropped by searching for BJJ. We ended up becoming good friends and he introduced BJJ to me in his free time. We spoke for hours and hours about martial arts too. I didn’t know about Jits and he didn’t know about Aikido. We ended up sharing lots of thoughts and had really interesting discussions led by curiosity.
He didn’t diss Aikido, but he made some points which made me question it. Being crushed miserably as an Aikido black belt by a BJJ blue belt was eye-opening too. My “Aikido vs MMA” video experience definitely helped too. What mattered even more though were discussions I’ve had online about it. I started to see a lot of hypocrisy in Aikido. Meanwhile, BJJ and MMA people made a lot of good points that kept leading me in opening my eyes.”
We also asked him about peoples preference for Aikido and why they genuinely believe it may be the best martial art, he responded with: “I think it’s very closely tied to a sense of identity of an individual. To many people, martial arts are a strong part of their identity, at least in Aikido and other similar martial arts. I don’t know so much about catch wrestling to be honest, [but] you are presented with an idea that you are an invincible martial artist and that further continues to grow into becoming a strong part of an identity.
Meanwhile, this seductive nature of feeling all-powerful is a difficult one to let go of. As fascinating as it is to observe, there seem to be cases where people prefer an illusion that makes them feel better than truth. Finding out that you are indeed far from invincible after devoting a decade of your sweat and energy can be so tough, that it almost seems like some people instead choose to burrow themselves even deeper into their delusion. Sometimes even unknowingly to themselves, as an automatic response, just in order to avoid the very difficult experience of losing your developed sense of power and identity which your life is based around. Almost like an identity survival mechanism I’d say. I could go on forever, but I think this is the main gist of it.”
He furthered this point by adding “Many of us want to feel powerful or better than others. Since martial arts to many is a big part of identity, attaching your desire to feel superior to a martial art makes sense in this way. It kinda enables you to do it, since everyone in your martial art says it’s best and you start to drink that kool aid too. And it feels good to do too. It takes much more out of a person to instead consider that what you love is not ideal.”
Rokas also spoke about his MMA training, which he started around the same time as leaving Aikido. Although he’s not massively involved in MMA, he did train it extensively for a year and says this about his experience “I did an intensive year of MMA training in the States and then Ireland. At SBG Ireland I trained with pro MMA fighters in UFC and Bellator and had a chance to really see the inner workings of the whole game. After my intense training experience though I felt burned out. The fact that I was training martial arts pretty much nonstop for the past 17 years adds to that too I think and now I only train BJJ once in a while, taking a break from MMA training.
I’m no expert on BJJ in MMA by any means, but I’ll share my opinion from personal experience. Adding strikes changes a lot I’d say, especially at the beginning. There are many positions you can’t stay and hang around in when someone can punch you or elbow you. So you kinda learn to position yourself to take that into account. After doing MMA for a year full time, it was really strange to me to train with BJJ guys who would be in open positions where I thought: “I could bash your face now, what the f*** are you doing here?” and then I would remember that “they can” haha. You can also use strikes to create openings for sweeps or submissions, I think that adds its own element too.
I don’t think the gap is huge, but it’s evident at the beginning. Once you get used to it though, I think the gap becomes less evident.”
Due to his interesting and unique relationship with Aikido and BJJ, we used this opportunity to ask him about the possible watering down of BJJ. This is a stance that some people have been vocal about in recent years. In particular, Firas Zahabi mentioned ‘McDojos’ on the Joe Rogan podcast where gyms were soft on sparring and promotions.
This was his answer “BJJ has come a long way from where it started. Back in the day, from the stories I heard, it was pretty much Fight Club. Only tough people could survive even a single class. Nowadays – BJJ is a worldwide phenomenon. In order to become as accessible as it is, it made sense to make changes that a mother of two children could jump in and train to become a badass. Also, kids could start at 4 years and wouldn’t get brain damage for the rest of their lives. I think part of what some would call “watering down” is actually for the good. If someone is interested in harder sparring, there are usually gyms that focus on that more and you’re free to join them.
What I am opposed to though, is BJJ academies not including any self defense curriculum at all. Especially if these academies or gyms claim that BJJ is great for self defense. Competitive BJJ and BJJ with a greater understanding of self defense aspects are related, is not the same. I’m also not a big fan of people getting belts too easily. Make it accessible, but don’t make it easy, I’d say. How to put a stop to it? It’s a tough question. The world is the way it is. There is a tendency for things to get watered down. But I personally think there is enough quality Jiu Jitsu to show a good example and hopefully, the students of these places will continue sharing good Jits.”
Lastly, we asked him about going viral on Youtube and his success on the platform. We wondered whether this was a plan through his Aikido vs MMA videos or whether it was accidental, and what the reaction was from the Aikido community due to changing his stance on the art.
He replied “At a period when I was giving Aikido a hard time on my channel, quite a few people were making claims that I was doing it all for money. Heck, some even claimed that someone hired me to bash Aikido haha. The truth is, I never cared about money much. If I wanted to be rich from YouTube, I would have done some things differently. The option is always there, but I’m simply not that interested in making videos just for views that convert to money and “fame”.
I was on a mission to spread a message I consider to be important though and for that reason, I did work hard to do my best for some videos to reach as many people as possible. Becoming well known in martial arts was just a natural side-effect of that, but never a priority for me.
To answer the second question: Hell yes! Before I started questioning Aikido I was becoming a global Aikido star. I had invitations to fly over to other countries to teach seminars and Aikido people recognized and respected me all over the place.
As soon as I started questioning it though all the invitations to teach seminars dried out or were canceled. I was more or less forced to leave the organization I belonged to and was not a welcome face in Aikido events anymore. Quite a few Aikidoka also took the time to write unpleasant comments on my videos too. But not everyone was bad. There are also some folk in Aikido who do support my journey. The most pleasant experience was also learning years after that some aikido people who used to hate me, eventually realized I was right and thanked me for it.”
Finally, he says on his future plans, “That would be a long answer if I’d answer honestly. Short answer though, establishing myself as a credible figure in a new field”
You can catch his videos on martial arts here
