Sonny Brown – BJJ Black Belt. 3× Australian MMA Champion. Coach.

I’m Sonny Brown, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, three-time Australian MMA champion, and full-time martial arts coach based in Sydney. I’m the co-founder of Apex MMA on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, the host of The Sonny Brown Breakdown podcast, the syllabus author for the Train Alta 20-Week Warrior Training Program, and head of marketing and social media for NYSE-listed Mixed Martial Arts Group (MMA.INC). What follows is how I got here.

,Biography

Competing

I started training martial arts seriously in 2007, beginning with Shoot Fighting, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and wrestling all at the same time at Langes MMA under BJJ world champion, Shooto veteran and Australian MMA pioneer Coach Anthony Lange. At the time, I was working full-time in IT as a network administrator. I had my first amateur MMA bout for Shooto Australia, fell in love with the competition side and started to compete regularly in professional Mixed Martial Arts bouts and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competitions.

I was eventually able to win three MMA title bouts, becoming a three-time Australian Mixed Martial Arts Champion in the lightweight division and beating standouts Dan Hooker and Damien Brown. I was also lucky enough to secure one MMA victory via Gogoplata choke, and at this stage am still the only person in Australia to do so. Alongside MMA, I found success in No-Gi grappling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competitions, winning roughly 18 gold, 10 silver and 7 bronze medals at state and national level.

Teaching & The Transition to Coaching

Eventually, I stopped competing in MMA, attended the University of Sydney, and changed careers into teaching by earning a Bachelor of Education in Health & Physical Education. During that time of transformation, I began using my IT background to produce technical video analysis and breakdowns of Mixed Martial Arts bouts, uploading them to YouTube. I also began shifting my focus more towards coaching rather than competing, drawing on the new coaching knowledge I was gaining from my studies. I even experimented with Tae Kwon Do through the university and competed in the art.

In 2017, I was awarded my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt by my coach, 4th Degree Black Belt Anthony Lange, and I’ve continued to train, teach and compete in grappling ever since. I also developed a renewed interest in American Folkstyle wrestling, earning my Level 2 Folkstyle Wrestling Coach qualification with The Wrestling Foundation under the guidance of my wrestling coach Gary Jones. I was also fortunate enough to referee the first-ever Folkstyle Wrestling tournament held in Australia, which was a fantastic event.

The breakdown and technical analysis videos I was producing began to be favourably received by viewers, including positive feedback from members of the martial arts community and even some of the people I’d featured: Randy Couture, Matt Lindland, Karo Parisyan, Phil Davis and the coach of the Granby High wrestling school among them.

The Sonny Brown Breakdown Podcast

In 2019, I started The Sonny Brown Breakdown podcast to have long-form conversations on the training, teaching, health and education of mixed martial arts. Over more than 60 episodes, I have been lucky enough to sit down with some of the most respected names in the game, including MMA Hall of Famer Chris Brennan, Combat Submission Wrestling founder Erik Paulson, ADCC medallists Craig Jones and Lachlan Giles, Daisy Fresh founder Heath Pedigo, author and Joe Rogan Experience regular Daniele Bolelli, Australia’s first BJJ black belt John Will, alongside coaching innovators like Priit Mihkelson, Greg Souders and Christian Graugart. The podcast has grown to a worldwide audience across Australia, the United States, Europe and Asia, with millions of listens to date, and is ranked by Listen Notes in the top 1% of podcasts globally.

Over more than 60 episodes, I have been lucky enough to sit down with some of the most respected names in the game, including MMA Hall of Famer Chris Brennan, Combat Submission Wrestling founder Erik Paulson, ADCC medallists Craig Jones and Lachlan Giles, Daisy Fresh founder Heath Pedigo, author and Joe Rogan Experience regular Daniele Bolelli, Australia’s first BJJ black belt John Will, alongside coaching innovators like Priit Mihkelson, Greg Souders and Christian Graugart. The podcast has grown to a worldwide audience across Australia, the United States, Europe and Asia, with millions of listens to date, and is ranked by Listen Notes in the top 1% of podcasts globally.

Apex MMA, Muay THai & Jiu-Jitsu

Not long after I began teaching, the pandemic arrived. That period of disruption forced a rethink of what the next phase of my martial arts career was going to look like, and it ended up opening up a number of new opportunities I would not have otherwise expected. The biggest of those was the start of my own academy. In 2022, when Coach Anthony Lange closed the doors of Langes MMA after nearly three decades and I started Apex MMA in Brookvale on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. We have since produced a fight team with a winning record above 70% and 2 Australian Muay Thai Champions and well as state, national and pan pacific Jiu-Jitsu champions.

Train Alta & MMA.INC

Around the same time, I was given the opportunity to write the syllabus for the 20-Week Warrior Training Program with Train Alta. A staged curriculum of 100 classes that takes someone with no prior experience through foundations, technique and movement, pressure and preparation, and into an optional amateur MMA bout at the end of the 20 weeks. Through the program, I have also had the chance to work and collaborate with some of the biggest names in the sport, including two-division UFC champion Daniel Cormier, UFC commentator Laura Sanko, and Conor McGregor’s long-time coach John Kavanagh. It has since been run over 200 times worldwide and is now distributed through UFC Gyms and independent partner gyms across Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United States and beyond.

I also moved into leading the marketing and social media for the parent company, which in April 2024 listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “MMA”. The business rebranded from Alta Global Group to Mixed Martial Arts Group, MMA.INC, in December 2024, bringing the Warrior Training Program, the UFC Gym partnership, gym management platform BJJLINK, marketing platform Hype and the mixedmartialarts.com community under the one umbrella.

Being involved in the growth of a publicly listed martial arts company has been a unique experience and has given me a view of the industry I would never have got from the mats alone. I now look forward to continuing to grow in all these endeavours into the future.

Competition Footage