Famous actor Ashton Kutcher recently made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and alongside the usual talk about his career, he also gave a demonstration of Jiu-Jitsu with the show’s host as well. Kutcher has been one of the biggest celebrity BJJ practitioners in recent memory, and he’s been working hard to develop his grappling skills for around 15 years at this point. He’s spent that time training under the legendary Rigan Machado and he’s been a very vocal proponent of the sport, both from an effective self-defense perspective and as a general hobby to enjoy as well.
In fact, Kutcher was rewarded for his efforts by being promoted to black belt in BJJ by Machado just a matter of months ago. Although this is always a huge moment for any practitioner, Kutcher is back to training as normal just like everybody else. The main difference is that his celebrity status affords him the ability to spread Jiu-Jitsu further than almost anyone else and this appearance on The Tonight Show is a great example of that. Celebrities from all areas training in and talking about Jiu-Jitsu help to push the sport into the mainstream consciousness more and more as the years go by, and Kutcher is no exception.
When talking about his promotion to black belt, Kutcher gave the credit to his instructor Machado; who he’s been training with the entire time he’s been involved with the sport. Then in true Jiu-Jitsu fashion, he was self-deprecating when talking about his accomplishment:
“This is Rigan Machado, who’s like one of the greatest in the world. That’s my coach, and he’s coached me for 15 years… And I don’t know. I feel like he gave it to me out of pity. He’s like, ‘You’re getting up there, man…’”
The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon shared the footage of Ashton Kutcher demonstrating Jiu-Jitsu with the host to their official Instagram account:
