Neil Melanson is a Black belt in Hayastan wrestling. He was taught by the likes Karo Parisyan Gokor Chivichyan and also trained under Gene LeBell Due to this, he is well versed in various forms of grappling such as wrestling and BJJ. He is also widely known for training MMA champions such as Randy Courture and Vitor Belfort. Away from the MMA world, he is known for his innovations in grappling such as using the cradle in BJJ and the Squirrel guard amongst other things.
He started training around the age of 25 years old in 2002 due to the desire to improve his combat skills whilst working as an air marshal and wanting to advance in to the CIA. Due to suffering from Behcet’s disease, Melanson went blind in both eyes for around one month, before recovering sight in one of them. Since then, he has devoted most of his life to coaching and is thought of as one of the best MMA coaches in the industry.
His life and work before grappling
Before coaching MMA & grappling, Melanson’s job was as an air marshal. He described this career as “Simple but difficult, it’s a dangerous thing if something happens because there’s no backup. There’s a lot of people crammed into a small place. We had the highest shooting qualifications in all of the federal service. You see all these heads and people freaking out, you can’t miss. If you miss, you kill someone else. The job itself was mundane miserable and hard, a lot of air marshals would get sick which is what happened to me.”
He continues “I was going into the CIA which is why I was pursuing the grappling. I boxed a little but I just liked sparring. With the UFC I wanted to learn ground stuff like Judo. I ended up at a shootfighting gym, then I transferred to the LA field office. I trained there under Gokor. I was like holy crap, I’d never met anyone like him.”
On Behcet’s disease and how it impacted his life
Melanson was born with Behcet’s disease, it impacted his life massively which eventually lead to his career in MMA. This triggered in Melanson’s body during his late 20’s which is common with the disease and meant he could no longer work his job since he became blind.
We asked about the issues he faced with the disease and he replied “It’s very similar to lupus. That’s why I went blind in my left eye and deaf in my right ear. I went blind in both eyes for about a month and through treatments they got my right eye back but my left eye was toast. The problem with that is I get a lot of skin sores, joint pain, fatigue then I had canker sores. I counted I had 86 at one time, I couldn’t eat then I started getting the sores on the lining of my brain and they caused loads of weird problems. My immune system was too strong and out of control so I’d get weak easily. Grappling was extra hard as it was too much but I didn’t want to quit. The drug they gave me knocks the immune system down. It was called Remocade. I got a lot of infections, when I get staph I’m in hospital for a week, so I’m vulnerable. I take something claled Humera, it’s a bit better so I don’t get sitck. When I went blind, I was living alone in LA, it was f***ing terrifying.”
“That’s why I started coaching. Rolling flares my disease up, so I train when I can. I would always push it, now I’m older I can kind of predict when it triggers, I can balance stuff now. I used to roll for 3 hours straight, now I roll for 30 minutes so I don’t break down so easily. It’s been a struggle but I love the sport so much so it’s worth getting sick, it was worth the suffering.”
“I loved MMA, but I couldn’t get a pro card due to my vision so I started coaching. I was like a gym rat, I used to compete but with the health issues I couldn’t be healthy on a competition day which was frustrating. My doctors tell me I shouldn’t do the sport, but they say a lot of things. It’s very frustrating seeing other guys doing well and I never got my chance to go out there and show guys what I could do. I just got a reputation that I was a gym rat, coach. I embraced it instead of making excuses. Once you get used to it, it’s part of your life. It’s got better though now, I’m 43 now and still doing it.”
Getting his toe surgically removed
Due to shattering his toe, Melanson got his 2nd toe removed which went viral after becoming publicised. The online BJJ community was shocked to see the sight of him training with a toe missing which further added to his reputation as being truly dedicated to the art. On this episode, he added “I was thinking about other people. I was in Vegas coaching Randy Courture and Vitor Belfort, I was very busy. I’d broken the toe a few times so it was weak. I was rolling with this kid who was a beginner. He was doing ok, not panicking. I went back for a straight ankle lock but let him work so we both have fun, I don’t want to beat up a beginner, I’m the coach. When I dropped for the ankle, he panicked and literally grabbed my toe and broke it over my big toe, almost through the skin. I was like ‘hey man, you can’t do that’ so I broke it back the best I could and continued. What’s sad is I never saw the guy again but I laughed, I didn’t freak out on him.
I needed to spar with Vitor and Randy in their camps so I kept training. When I had a break, my foot still hurt and my toe was on top of my big toe. The doctor said the whole joint is shattered, the recovery was no contact for 6 months to a year. I said ‘f*** that’, I’m not going to let these guys down over a toe so I asked for it to get cut off. I had it surgically removed. Randy thought it was hilarious, he tried to get the toe framed and put it in his office! An ESPN writer asked me about the foot so he did a story on it. I thought it would be more embarrassing than anything. It took off, then people acted like I’d cut it off myself and the story changed it was farfetched. People said I’d cut it off and trained on the same day, it was on radio and magazines. Then people called me nine-toe Neil, Matt Mitrione started that nickname.” Since then, it is a minor inconvenience for him whilst sparring.
On Hayastan, Catch Wrestling and 10th Planet
“Hayastan is a blend of Jiu Jitsu, Judo, Sambo and Catch Wrestling. Hayastan is an Armenian gym founded by Gokor Chivichyan. He was a Sambo, Judo competitor. Gene LaBell pulled him under his wing who was Judo and Catch. Gene had lineage from Ed ‘Strangler’ Lewis. Ed was so good when Catch matches were real, you made money on the house take and you’d get a chunk of seat sales. People stopped showing up because he Ed winning. So he started throwing matches so it was all over the news. Ed did a rematch and people f***ing flooded the arena when he got his title back. It started to click when people would do fake matches to make money and avoid injuries, back then health care wasn’t the same. Back then, if you got an ACL break there was no recovery. Then it morphed into what you see on TV now which is where you see the talking and stuff.”
“So yeah, the roots go back. I’m a Hayastan black belt. I do gi, but mostly focus on the MMA world. People label me a Catch guy, but I’m really just a Hayastan guy. Everyone calls me that, I rarely talk about it unless someone asks me. Catch is cool, but there’s a lot of phonies who make it look bad. Some guys don’t know what they’re doing. Then you have real guys who train real catch. When you throw pins into the game it changes everything. Catch should train with Jiu Jitsu guys, you’d be stupid not to.”
“It’s funny, you bring up 10th Planet, but Eddie Bravo learned the lockdown from LaBell. It was originally called the Indian Deathlock, it’s in Eddie’s book. Originally it was a toe hold with a different leg entanglement. Eddie ran with it and made it more of a guard, he made it an entire game. 10th Planet is heavily influenced by Catch, not the guard game but a lot of the other stuff. I think he got a lot of it from Nino Schembri, his Jiu Jitsu was sick. He was the guy who I think was the original guy to do gogoplatas, rubber guard and all that. Eddie built off of it and made it into something, but Nino’s Jiu Jitsu was great.”
The BCG’s and his toughest ever student
You may have seen his video on the BJJFanatics Youtube channel (see video above for background information) which is an emotional story about a particular student who survived brain surgery and showed that toughness wasn’t always measured in physical strength, but is instead measured by heart. Talking on the subject Neil said “Yeah, he was the dorkiest guy you’ve ever met in your life, but he was clever and funny. He was little, skinny as hell and was a piano teacher at a school. I had a grappling team called the BCG’s which stood for ‘Big cock guys’. It was meant to be super obnoxious, you get names like ‘Predators’ and stuff so we were joking. The team ran with it and made t-shirts saying ‘We take on all comers and come on all takers’ – the dads loved it but the mums hated it. We killed it at tournaments and weren’t too serious, but the team practice was brutal. They asked to bring John along who wants to learn, so I let him in but I usually didn’t do that. He was clever, funny and would roll. I let him compete just to see how he did, he won a few but it was funny, even when doing cross faces and being rough, he’d be apologising to the guy during the match.
One day he told us he had brain cancer and he was getting experimental surgery and there was a solid chance he’d die. He lost all use of his one arm, so he lost his piano job which was his whole life. He gets the surgery and wore his training shorts during the operation. I didn’t realise how much the team meant to him until then. He survived and as soon as he’s cleared, he comes in to watch. He couldn’t move his arm and had staples in his head. He got a rugby helmet and started training again with one hand. He got really good at it and now has a little control back in his other hand. I saw him years later when back in Vegas, he was a funny guy. He was really brave and tough. I learned not to judge a book by his cover, he was strong-willed and really committed. You see some fighters at their worst and I think some of the smaller guys are mentally stronger as they have to scrap more.”
Plans for the future
Lastly, we asked Melanson about his future goals and what life holds for him looking forward. He stated “I took a break from coaching. After the Blackzilians I was done with the lifestyle. I got a job with MGM in Las Vegas as a first responder after the shooting a few years back. I was part of a team for about 2 years and just needed a break from full-time coaching. Now I’m ready to come back, I resigned and have built a new site, I’m going to have online privates and classes. I’ve built a film studio in my garage with lighting and equipment. I plan on doing webinars, seminars and teaching. I’m going to start working with fighters again.
I was making great money as a coach, but I couldn’t decide who to coach so I didn’t have freedom. I’d have to coach guys against my friends and would get put in awkward positions. I was like f*** this I’m done. Now I have some freedom now, I don’t have to rely on fighter money or a boss paying me. I just want to travel, help different guys and I really want to focus on hobbyists. I miss coaching the pure grappling so I’m excited to go back and teach all the fun stuff. Now with Zoom I can do privates with guys in Australia or anyone in the world, it’s so cool.”
You can find more at about his recent updates where you will be able to book private lessons at NeilMelanson.com and catch his Triangle Choke book here. He also has a video instructional out, called Cradle of Filth.
