Matt Thornton (martial artist)

Matt Thornton (born March 25, 1969) is a martial arts athlete, trainer, and founder of Straight Blast Gym International, an association of over 35 gyms worldwide engaged in training athletes in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, boxing and mixed martial arts.

He is well known in the martial arts community for his formulation and promotion of the concept of "aliveness" in training, as well as for being one of the first gyms to feature cross training in boxing and other fighting sports at the beginning of the growth of the sport of Mixed Martial Arts in the 1990s. He was among the first American-born practitioners to receive a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

After growing up in the Bay Area of CA, Matt joined the US Army where he began his involvement with martial arts as a boxer. In 1988 after leaving the Army he returned to the USA and began training in Jeet Kune Do (JKD), training which he continued in Portland, Oregon as a manager and trainer at a gym focused on JKD.

It was in this period that he first began to question aspects of traditional martial arts training methods, and began to formulate his concepts. In 1991 he attended a training session with renowned Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competitor Rickson Gracie. He has recounted this as a breakthrough experience: "I watched Rickson wrestle a room of Judo black belts. He tapped them all out within seconds, without using his hands, and I knew this is for me!"

This began an intensive immersion in BJJ, which included training under Rickson, from whom he received his blue belt in 1992, and later training under Chris Haueter who subsequently awarded him purple, brown and black belts in BJJ.

Matt founded the first Straight Blast Gym in Salem, Oregon in 1992, in an effort to create a gym that allowed athletes to train with aliveness. This was the key organizing concept that Thornton created to tie together the various innovations that he had been developing. It included the elimination of the focus on static forms, or kata, that typified most martial arts training in the United States and much of the world at that time. In 1994 a larger gym in Portland, Oregon was opened, and remains the headquarters for the Straight Blast Gym international association.

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