‘Saved By The Bell’ star Mario Lopez recently got in some training with Justin Flores in preparation for an upcoming competition. There are quite a lot of famous faces taking part in Jiu-Jitsu but Lopez is a whole other type of celebrity BJJ enthusiast, because he regularly enters tournaments. The majority of celebrities in BJJ either take private classes only or even if they do train with the general public, they don’t tend to compete. Anyone who is looking to compete obviously needs to challenge themselves in training as well, and there are very few people in the world on the technical level that Flores is.
He’s one of the sharpest minds in grappling with the widest base of knowledge, as he’s a BJJ and Judo black belt who also has a wealth of wrestling experience. He can quite literally do it all when it comes to submission grappling and there’s a reason that some of the best competitors and MMA fighters in the world travel to train under him. Although Lopez is a celebrity, he actually shares something in common with Flores as a lifelong grappler under different rulesets himself. Lopez was a fantastic wrestler in his youth and after finding BJJ later in life, he was actually promoted to purple belt back in 2022.
It was a very well-deserved promotion too, as Lopez had won quite a few gold medals in his age division as a blue belt. He competed pretty regularly at that point and the small amount of available footage shows that he’s a very skilled grappler with solid wrestling. Obviously the difficulty increases for everyone as they move up a belt level, but having guidance and instruction from someone like Flores is a huge advantage. As a representative of Gracie Barra, Lopez also has access to some fantastic training partners in both his home gym and plenty of other gyms around the world.
The full footage of Mario Lopez training with Justin Flores was uploaded to his official YouTube channel of the JFLO Grappling Academy:
