Serbian BJJ black belt Aleksandar Rajacic talks to BJJ Eastern Europe about his BJJ journey, the humanitarian seminars he has organised for victims of the recent Balkan floods, his upcoming MMA fight in Poland and what he feels are threats and opportunities of the Serbian BJJ community:
1. Hi Aleksandar, can you please introduce yourself to the BJJ Community of Eastern Europe?
My name is Aleksandar Rajacic. I am 30 years old, from Belgrade, Serbia. I am black belt in BJJ and mostly in the last couple of months I’ve trained in Victory, Zeleznicar and my Old School BJJ.
I was 3rd on IBJJF Europeans brown belt divison.
Fila European champion and World vice-champion.
Naga advance No Gi champion.
Also I have won many competions in the region.
2. How did you discover BJJ and how did you start training? Tell us about your BJJ and MMA journey.
I found out from my friend about BJJ. At first I was traning only once a week for two months. Then I became a big fan of BJJ and I started to be regular, and since then BJJ is part of my life. With MMA is a different story. I started doing it after I came back from the USA. I knew that if I didn’t go back to the States it would be almost impossible to make some big result in BJJ, and then I found a new goal in MMA. When it comes to MMA, I had and still have space to improve my MMA skills in Serbia, that’s why I changed priority and now I am just competing in MMA.
3. You are organizing some fundraising seminars for the victims of the floods in Serbia. Please tell us more about that.
Nikola Savic and I made a fb page and contacted many friends of ours from and outside the country to make some seminars and to post it on that page. So basically, it was just Nikola’s and my idea to reach as much people as we can to start organizing seminars. Until now we’ve had 6,7 seminars, and there is a plan to continue with that for some time. For now people have made seminars in few cities in Serbia. Also, there were seminars in Chicago, Podgorica, Ljubljana. We are planning to make on Sunday 29.6 big BJJ seminar in Belgrade and after that I will meet with some friends from other sports and see if we can organize seminars on kick boxing, wrestling, etc.
4. Please tell us about your academy Old School BJJ.
It’s a very young academy that started to work in November 2013. Nikola Savic and I are founders and coaches of Old School BJJ. Even though it is a very young club, we have some very good competitors which are our friends and came to train with us. So even though we haven’t been on scene for a long time, we already have very strong team. In the last two regional competitions that we competed we won two third places in teams ranking, and we had only 5 competitors competing. In my opinion, the biggest advantage for our students is that they can learn two completely different styles of BJJ in one place. Nikola is one of the best that I’ve seen in half guard and tight control, on other side I do some other stuff well, so that’s a great mix in one place.
Part of Old School BJJ Academy
5. You’ve recently received your BJJ black belt by Carlos Maia. How did it happen and how did it feel?
It’s a long story but I will try to make it short. I met Carlos when I was on BJJ camp on Balaton in 2011. Then I had a chance for the first time to see his skills and I was very impressed. Later we stayed in contact and he came for a seminar last year, after that I was few times in Slovenia. This year on seminar he promoted me to black belt, that was a great honor for me. The feeling was weird because it happened on the weekend which was the worst period in Serbia during floods, so I couldn’t be really happy.
6. What do you think about the growth of BJJ in the Serbia? What are threats and opportunities for BJJ there?
If you look at the situation now and how it was 9 years ago when I started to train, you can see that there is a big difference, these days there are much more BJJ schools. That’s good, but the bad thing is that many people with blue of purple belt have they own school and they don’t have a place where they are going to learn from somebody who is at higher lever than them. I think that’s the biggest threat to BJJ in Serbia. In my opinion, if you want to train BJJ go to the places which have proven results not internet results. Also, what I can notice many people now posting that they won silver and there were only two competitors in the category, or bronze and therewere only 3 or 4 people in the category. If you didn’t win any fight don’t boast about that. That’s very bad and they are creating a bad wave from my point of view.
Aleksandar with Nikola Savic
7. Please tell us about your upcoming MMA fight in Poland
I am fighting this Friday against Filip Wolanski. It will be very tough fight for me. I am coming back after more than a year break, so I think that’s my biggest problem. Also, Filip who is very good in almost all segments of MMA.
For me it’s now important to get back in the game, I hope with a win. But win or lose – I am back, and that’s in the first place for me.
8. What’s next for you and your team in 2014-2015?
Soon we will start to prepare for ADCC trials, then in January we will go to Lisbon. Those are two big competitions that we are planning for next six months. Also we will compete on few regional competitions at that time. For me personally I don’t know yet. I want to finish this fight and then I will see what is the best for me.
9. Feel free to tanks sponsors or somebody
I want to thank to my family, friends and my students for the support.
