Joe Cunningham

W2WMA is proud and excited to have Joe Cunningham as our Black Belt Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructor.  Affectionately known as “Joemoplata”, has been a student with the Yamasaki Academy since 1998. His interest in the sport started after watching Royce Gracie dominate opponents in the early Ultimate Fighting Championships using techniques that, at the time, were widely unknown to most people in the United States.

Like most students of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu usually find, once he started training he was quickly hooked and began spending as much time as he could at the Yamasaki Springfield academy learning from the instructors. He has competed in various Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Submission Grappling tournaments including NAGA, Grapplers Quest, US Grappling, and the Pan American Championships. In December of 2010 he was awarded the rank of Black Belt from Francisco Neto and Fernando Yamasaki