The first decade – From lock up – to an academy – to the BMA empire.
The first chapter…
BMA originally called Citus MMA (2011-2021) was founded in 2011 by head coach Nico Bajerski. The academy was started when Nico was a personal trainer at a large fitness gym in West Yorkshire, he started to teach kick boxing on a Saturday morning. Shortly after the classes were changed to “MMA classes”
Upon officially opening as an academy in 2011, Nico found a local lockup unit in Halifax. The whole academy consisted of a piece of carpet, and four old punch bags and a stereo. Nico called the club “Citus MMA” – Citus means rapid in Latin and ‘rapid’ represents rapid learning, and rapid movement as Nico was also known for being fast. In the first year of Citus there was just three classes; Thursday and Friday evenings and Saturday morning, the day times were for personal training.
The beginning of the club was extremely difficult, for six months to a year hardly anyone came and the club was almost going to close its doors for good on several occasions. But with Nico’s determination and savings from his day job, the academy was moved into a more suitable unit for martial arts, and also bigger. New equipment was installed, and it slowly began to take momentum.
Through 2014-16 It was slow going and a period of time where the academy was a part time academy while coach Nico was working full time and still training full time as a student.
In 2016 Competition now came in. On Citus MMA first ever competition outing…at fight-star inter-club, Myles Bush a kick boxing competitor was awarded ‘fighter of the interclub’ where the fightstar team came to Citus to award him with the trophy. A week later Alex dives was entered into grapple nation where he took gold with three matches and three wins via submission.
From there a few weeks later James White and Jaz Duncan were entered into MMA fights and they had three fights that year between them going 3-0, competing against undefeated Amateur competitors with more experience than them.
Citus MMA was now attracting the likes of ex world kick boxing champions and other head MMA coaches to its classes.
Through 2017 – 2018 Nico was very active as a coach, working as the head MMA coach of three gyms simultaneously, this was giving Nico extreme coaching experience but at the same time Citus was not getting the full attention it could. We was doing well at Empire grappling and entering students into MMA and k1 fights but it was time to really build an empire…
In 2019 Nico was able to give his undivided attention to Citus MMA, the academy of course took a huge spike in progress and new classes were added, in this year he was also awarded his BJJ brown belt, competed in K1 and affiliated the academy under Master leo negao.
After surviving the covid pandemic, Citus came back with a vengeance!!
We expanded the academy into two vacant parts of the mill, which gave us access to build a weights area, and expand the matted area meaning we now had the largest matted area of any gym in the north of the United Kingdom.
In 2021 The decision was made to change the academy name to BMA – meaning “Bajerski Martial Arts” – it was now time for a short powerful name with meaning, and to move beyond the academy.
2022 was the year we reached unprecedented heights. We became UK renowned in the martial arts world! We became the empire champion BJJ team defeating over 80 other academies, shortly after Nico was promoted to the rank of BJJ black belt (professor) becoming the first ever BJJ black belt to come out of Halifax. Then we started 300 interclub and welcomed teams from all over the north to come and compete with us. Students of this year became some of the top amateur UK MMA fighters, European IBJJF brown belt champion, British submission fight series 2 x British champion, and multiple grapple fest contenders, and 2-0 on grapple fest.
BMA is now an entity of its own transcending the four walls of the academy helping people in competition to self-defence and business far and wide.
BMA is known around Europe for having a good Jiu Jitsu base and good connections in the martial arts world.
The BMA style.
BMA is a full style, that has been developed over the last 13 years.
BMA is not just a leading competitive style, it is also a full system for self-defence, many public security personnel use BMA, from the police to door staff to prison officers, BMA has proved time over that it holds its weight in dangerous environments.
Our style of striking is a forward Dutch style, with use of both stances, leg kicks, stab kicks and fakes.
Our style of grappling is a heavy pressure game, that opens into beautiful kinetic chain submission attack series, it is a universal style that has been proven to work at the highest level of IBJJF, to the cage, to the street, with no change in how it is taught. With heavy use of the darce choke.