Since childhood Darren has had a great interest in martial arts and health in general. At the age of 10 he started training judo and regularly competed. At 11 he competed in the IBF European Championship in Belgium, winning silver. He started boxing at 17 and fought for the final time in this discipline in 2014. Shortly after stopping boxing, fascination drove him to take his first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class…He fell in love with it.

Darren is a Roger Gracie Academy black belt and regularly competes at a high level, becoming English champion in 2016, 2017 & 2018, NAGA UK Champion in 2018 and British Nogi Champion (‘Advanced’ division) in 2018 & 2021. He has countless gold medals at every belt level in both gi and nogi!

MMA was an obvious transition, enabling him to combine his striking and grappling experience. After training MMA for a couple of years he was offered a job as an MMA coach at a previous gym and has never looked back. He gained a lot of experience here in coaching and cornering MMA fighters. Jiu Jitsu then gradually took over his life allowing little time to train other disciplines except those that would better him as a BJJ fighter.