Rodtang Jitmuangnon is a legend in the Muay Thai world and has established himself as one of the best fighters on the planet over the last few years without ever needing to see a gi or do BJJ. Although Muay Thai fighters are generally known for being prolific competitors, particularly in Thailand itself, Jitmuangnon is on a whole other level. He’s already had well over 300 professional fights in the sport and won almost 90% of them, despite only making his debut back in 2016. Jitmuangnon was just 19 at the time and in the years since then he’s won multiple titles in the sport before becoming the ONE Championship flyweight world champion.
Jitmuangnon is still only 26 so he has plenty of time to continue his combat sports career, and it seems like he might be looking at taking on some new challenges. That’s not all that surprising actually, as he was happy to take on MMA legend Demetrious Johnson in a mixed-rules fight in the past. The pair alternated between their respective sports each round, and Jitmuangnon was submitted in the second round (the first MMA round) with a rear-naked choke. It stands to reason then that he must have already done a fair bit of grappling training in order to prepare for that fight, but it’s likely that most of his time would have been spent practicing basic no gi submission defense and standing up.
Now it seems as though Rodtang Jitmuangnon might be preparing for something else, as he put on a gi to do a BJJ training session recently. Jason ‘Spark Plug’ Burnworth shared a photo of a recent training session to the story on his official Instagram account, and Jitmuangnong can be seen in the background wearing a gi and white belt. The other man in the image is none other than De’Alonzio ‘DJ’ Jackson, a top BJJ competitor and the head coach at Southside MMA Thailand. While the image might just be from a casual training session or even one from quite some time ago, it’ll be worth paying attention to what Rodtang Jitmuangnon might be doing with his BJJ skills in the future.
