Jonathan Lipnicki made waves in Hollywood in the late 90’s starring in movies such as Jerry Maguire and Stuart Little, but as time went on Lipnicki transitioned from geeky, unassuming child to a muscle bound BJJ player and has recently earned his BJJ purple belt.
Lipnicki has long been involved martial arts, in a 2012 interview with ESPN, Lipnicki expanded on how his journey in BJJ began: “I grew up in Westlake Village, a suburb of L.A. There was a guy there who was a fighter and was like, “I’ll teach you to box.” I started a little bit of boxing, then it crossed over into jiu-jitsu. I was into it for a little while, but then I started doing basketball, baseball, team sports. In high school, I ended up playing water polo and junior year, I really got into jiu-jitsu again. I quit water polo and did it competitively.”
It was through his mother’s passion for the sport that Lipnicki took a step further into the world of MMA. After Lipnicki’s mother founded an amateur promotion, “Fight Sports Entertainment”, the actor found himself helping out local fighters as both a reluctant grappling coach and a sparring partner, helping local fighters ready themselves for battle.
“I’ve given my mom a lot of the fighters to fight in a show,” Lipnicki told ESPN. “I’m actually training one of my friends right now, he’s fighting a jiu-jitsu guy. So I’m his sparring guy. If it’s someone way better, I won’t be a good sparring partner. I really call myself a student who helps out when need be. If we have a fighter who’s getting ready for a fight, who’s around 155 and needs help on their ground game, I’ll help them out. I wouldn’t call myself an instructor by any means. I wouldn’t want to give myself that kind of credit because there are black belts out there who are phenomenal. But I do help out.”
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While training has long been a passion for Lipnicki he seems reluctant to dedicate his time to fighting professionally and feels that right now acting is his main focus.
“It’s something that crosses my mind a lot and one of those things I think about doing, but I just don’t know. I’ve been pretty busy filming and I would need to put off a certain amount of time to really train for a fight and be in amazing cardio shape and really work on my striking more. I’m not saying no and I’m not saying yes,” said Lipnicki.
A potential MMA bout for Jonathan Lipnicki seems unlikely, however he has competed on a national level in BJJ, competing at the Gracie Nationals in 2007 as well as regularly competing at local tournaments. Lipnicki joins a long list of celebrity jiu jitsu practitioners including Ashton Kutcher, the late Paul Walker, Prince Jackson and Ed O’Neil.