Maynard James Keenan is an American progressive metal singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, winemaker, and actor, best known as the vocalist for Grammy Award-winning American progressive metal band Tool. He has released four studio albums with Tool, and three with A Perfect Circle.
Being from Ohio, Keenan has a strong wrestling background (his father was a wrestling coach) and he started training Jiu-Jitsu in the mid 90’s under Rickson Gracie. He has been training sporadically for all these years and is currently one of the BJJ coaches at Fifth Dimension Studios in Cottonwood, Arizona.
Keenan was finally promoted to purple today after years spent practicing. It was one of his original BJJ instructors Luis ‘Limao’ Heredia (student of Rickson Gracie) who promoted him.
You can see how dedicated he is to Jiu-Jitsu. Keenan wrote on his academy’s Facebook page:
Thankful moment. Yesterday, while on family vacation in Hawaii, I was blessed with a curveball. The coach that gave me my Blue belt years ago at Ricksons academy on Pico in LA, Luis “Limao” Heredia, @chieflimao Maui Jiu Jitsu, surprised me unexpectedly with a long, very kind, heart felt speech and my Purple Belt.
It’s taken quite awhile to get here. I moved to an area that had no Rickson Gracie Jiu Jitsu school in late ’96 and had to commute back and forth to keep up training which just wasn’t practical. I also suffered a few injuries which also made training inconsistent. And even when I could train, it wasn’t under a single instructor with a Rickson Gracie curriculum. So very difficult to advance in belts under this scenario.
But more recently I resumed training after some supportive prodding from one of my best friends in the world, Todd Fox. And I’ve been making regular trips back and forth to St Louis to train with his coach, Rodrigo Vaghi as well as to Los Angeles to train with my old friend Henry Akins, at Dynamix Martial Arts. Without these guys I wouldn’t have been able to confidently wear this belt. Thank you, Todd, Rodrigo, Henry, and Limao for this opportunity to test and understand myself better and to push my boundaries and discover more of which I am capable. @5dbjj @henrydynamixmma
Keenan, blue gi in the middle at his Fifth dimension BJJ academy
Keenan training with a young BJ Penn, Dave Camarillo and Gumby.
Keenan (left) with Carlos Machado
Famous incident when Keenan playfully hiptossed a fan during a Tool concert:
