LEARNING TO FIGHT
HOPE AIKEN TACKLES BRAZILIAN JIU-JITSU
Only a select number of women study martial arts, and even fewer have excelled after one year of training to win a championship, but fierce contender Hope Aiken is an impressive exception.
As an undergraduate biology major at UNCW, Aiken learned mixed martial arts, an unarmed combat sport formerly known as cage fighting. But after her first few matches, she realized something was missing.
She soon recognized her true love for Brazilian jiu-jitsu – a physically demanding, ground fighting combat sport with roots in judo. By applying the physics of leverage, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu martial artist can defeat her opponent no matter what their size or physical strength.
Since graduating, Aiken now trains eight to nine hours a day for national and international Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitions and wins many of them.
“It’s a full-time job,” Aiken says. And she loves it.
Aiken started training in Wilmington in 2010 at the Alliance Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy, a top-rated internationally affiliated training school. Since she began, Aiken has won her division at the 2011 World Jiu-Jitsu Championship in Long Beach, Calif., received her first belt rank promotion, and dominated this year’s Abu Dhabi trials in Miami, Fla., which earned her a free trip to compete in the United Arab Emirates in April.
Aiken partially attributes her rapid success in this male-dominated sport to her Alliance trainer, Jonathan Uzcategui. He saw her as more than just a customer, and Uzcategui felt confident that she would do well at her first world championship.
“He saw how fast I was learning and how good I was getting and saw my potential. There was like one other girl in the gym at the time. When he sees potential, he really pushes. I guess after I won (the World Jiu-Jitsu Championship), I felt like, yeah, I am good at this and it’s not just a fluke,” she says.
“I do the exact same thing as the guys do with Jonathan (at training), and I’ve gotten that good. They respect that I’m not given any special treatment.”
Because she feels like she is respected and can be herself at the academy, the instructors and
students there have become her second family.
“Having my team, ‘my family,’ my coach there is the reason I like to compete and the reason it makes it so much fun,” Aiken says.
And now Aiken isn’t just a trainee in the Alliance family. She works with Uzcategui
managing the local Alliance gym that had its grand reopening at a new location at 5424 Oleander Drive in August. The new gym also offers other work-out programs such as boxing and Muay Thai.
About a year and half after she started competing, she began assisting Uzcategui in his classes. Now, she teaches women’s fitness, kid’s self-defense, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
“(Uzcategui) saw how much I was interacting with everyone already. Everyone saw me as the person who was always in the gym,” Aiken says. “It just fell into place.”
