About The Club
Next Generation Ireland was founded in 2002 by David Jones. David started his martial arts career at age 6 in Wado Ryu Karate achieving 2nd Dan on his 19th Birthday. During college he trained in Aikido, Wing Chun, Japanese Jiu-Jitsu and Kickboxing. In 1998 following a viewing of the Rickson Gracie DVD choke and the early UFC’s, he set about trying to find instruction in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
In that year David met up with and began training with John Kavanagh first in De La Salle Churchtown, later in St Andrews College and then in John Kavanagh’s first full time club in Phibsboro. David received his blue belt from Matt Thornton of Straight Blast Gym in 2002.
Having travelled to the states in 2001 to train in California for two weeks, he returned and spent the summers of 2001 and 2002 living and training at the Next Generation fighting Academy in Irvine CA training with Chris Brennan, Jeremy Williams, Alex Serdyukov, Rick Estrada, Bao Quach, Gerald Strebendt, Adam Lynn, Buck Greer, Quinton Jackson and many other top athletes. During this time David lived at the gym as part of the live in training programme for overseas fighters.
He returned to Dublin and in July 2002 began teaching no-gi jiu jitsu in Loughlinstown Leisure centre, since then the club has gone from strength to strength producing many top MMA fighters and forming a training group that has a high emphasis on technical improvement.
David fought on the first Cage Show “Cage Wars” held in the UK in 2001 in Portsmouth, he has also fought on shows such as UFN, XFUK, UFR and Cage Challenge.
David has made two subsequent trips to the US to train on a daily basis with head of Next Generation Chris Brennan. Chris also makes a minimum of one visit a year to Dublin to grade students and teach seminars. The club now boasts over 20 blue belts and 3 purple belts in BJJ and continues to go from strength to strength, competing in both MMA fights and Submission Wrestling tournaments.
Whether your goal is to fight professionally, get fit or just train socially, Next Generation can provide the facilities for the goals of all our students.
Next Generation Highlight from David Jones on Vimeo.
