Diego Arriagada

Purple Belt under Professor Jamie Murray, Head Coach of Renegade MMA Melbourne 

Where it all began...

Since I was a kid I was always interested in martial arts wrestling at school with my friends, watching k1, pride, begging of ufc.. but i never dare myself to start training any of them.

As soon as I finished my degree in IT I decided to start travelling. I lived 6 months in Bangkok which was a lovley experience. Then I decided to come to Australia in 2016 on a working holiday visa. I arrived to Sydney and I saw this post on instagram about some jiu jitsu classes which from martial arts grappling is what I like the most, so I said to myself " you know what, why not". After my first class at Gracie Humaita in balmain I said to myself I need to come back and I start going 4/5 times a week to train and I felt in love very quickly with jiu jitsu. I had my first competition after 4 months of training. If I'm not wrong I think it was Sydney Cup. I won my first fight but lost my second from which I learned a lot out of it. 

Then I went up north to Port Douglas to extend my working holiday visa. Up there, there wasn't any kind of jiu jitsu gym i think the closest one was in Cairns but traveling there to train wasn't an option for me at that time. So I had to stop training jiu jitsu for 4 months. 

I came to Melbourne after my experience up north. I was living in Brunswick at that time and literally 1 block from where I was staying I saw this jiu jitsu gym called Science of jiu jitsu under coach Nam Bisso. I start training there and start competing again, doing really well, in 2018 I was unbeaten at all the comps I did; grappling Industries, Victorian, Nationals, and Pan Pacs, without receiving any point against me. 

After Nam had to leave to USA to live I decided to move to another gym but I wanted to still be part of AET family so the closest gym from me it was Renegade mma so I decided to move there on 2019. I have been at renegade since then and competing as much as I could.

Some of Diego amazing achievements...  ​​

May 2021 - Victorian state - Gold open & medium heavy purple belt gi and Silver medium heavy no-gi 

June 2019 - Grappling Industries - Gold open weight blue belt gi & bronze medium weight blue belt gi 

April 2019 - Victorian state - Gold medium weight blue belt gi

October 2018 - Pan Pacific - Gold medium weight white belt gi

August 2018 - Nationals - Gold medium weight white belt gi

June 2018 - Aus sub only - Gold medium weight white belt gi

March 2018 - SuperBjj - Gold medium weight white belt gi

January 2018 - Grappling Industries - Gold medium weight white belt gi 

 

1 x Pan Pacific Champion

1 x National Champion

3 x State Champion

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