After nearly 21 years of running Combat Base out of his Redondo Beach garage, legendary BJJ instructor Chris Haueter is preparing to close the doors on what many in the community consider a pilgrimage training destination.

On his podcast, Haueter laid out the financial forces that have slowly made the space unsustainable:

We are here in Redondo Beach. Like most areas along a coast, there is a limited resource called the beach.
My father, when he purchased his first home in Manhattan Beach for like $56,000, knew that eventually they are going to run out of beach land and that beach land is valuable.

I have watched this neighborhood gentrify. Eventually I knew we would either, if we could hold on to this thing, we would have a good nest egg, or we would be gentrified out.

Combat Base, which first laid down mats in 2005, never operated like a traditional academy.

Free from commercial rent, it remained small, selective, and deeply community-driven – roughly 20 regular practitioners, most of them black belts, rather than the hundreds of students typical of large commercial gyms.

That model, however, is precisely what makes a transition to a rented space financially unfeasible.
Haueter’s wife, Melissa, who runs the business side of Combat Base Club, explained the math:

Let us just say we are going to let go of a bunch of the other stuff Chris is doing so we can open up a school.

So now we are going to pay six grand a month in rent plus lose four or $5,000 a month in income.
So now we are actually in the hole like $11,000 instead of just six grand a month.

We cannot afford to do that because we cannot even afford to keep this space.
Because if we could afford to go in the hole $5,000 a month, we would be able to afford to keep this space.

At this point in time, I feel like I do not have the desire to pay to go to work.
I get paid to work and I will not pay to go to work.

Beyond finances, Combat Base’s true value has always been its culture:

You cannot say that every mat room that you walk into, every gym that you walk into, that you are 100% confident that the people that you train with are going to take care of you.
But I could say that about my people here.

As February’s closure approaches, Haueter remains reflective rather than bitter:

I know that all things come to an end. Through all that stuff comes new growth.
I see this as an opportunity rather than a liability.

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