Richie Martinez was born on July 28, 1984, and raised by a single mother — a former Mexican actress and Miss Los Angeles — alongside his younger brother Geo Martinez. Before either brother stepped onto a grappling mat, they were fixtures of California's breakdancing scene, competing in B-boying tournaments throughout the state. That shared creative background forged a close bond between the two, and it would later earn them the nickname "The Freak Brothers" once they established themselves in jiu-jitsu.

Grappling entered Richie's life in 2011 through his brother's example. Watching Geo systematically submit every opponent in the blue belt division at the Gracie Nationals, Richie felt compelled to follow. He joined Geo at 10th Planet Vista shortly after, beginning a career-defining commitment to the 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu system.

An Unconventional Path to the Mats

Martinez's early training path was unconventional by any measure. Living in Los Angeles during his first year, the distance from the Vista academy limited him to one visit per week. He spent the remaining time drilling positions he had learned — with his girlfriend serving as his training partner at home. The method worked. That unlikely regimen brought him to a blue belt standard before more consistent mat access became possible.

Training Under Eddie Bravo

Midway through his blue belt career, Martinez began training directly under Eddie Bravo at 10th Planet Headquarters, a transition that accelerated his development in both grappling and mixed martial arts. He made his MMA debut in 2013 competing for the Xplode Fight Series, adding a combat sports dimension to his competitive profile.

Black Belt Promotion and the San Diego Academy

As the Martinez brothers built their reputations in the grappling community, they channeled that recognition into academies of their own. Richie opened 10th Planet San Diego while Geo established a location in Oceanside. At the grand opening of the San Diego academy on January 3, 2015, Eddie Bravo awarded Richie his black belt — a ceremony that marked both a personal milestone and the founding of his primary coaching home.

Throughout his entire journey from beginner to black belt, Martinez trained exclusively in no-gi, coming up wholly within the 10th Planet system during a period when that approach faced considerable skepticism from segments of the traditional BJJ community.

EBI and Early Milestones

Martinez's competitive career on the major no-gi circuit stands as one of the more varied and sustained runs produced by the 10th Planet system. An early landmark came at EBI 1, where he won the welterweight division by accumulating the most ride-time across the bracket. As Jits Magazine reported at the time, neither finalist secured a finish in regulation, but Martinez's dominance in the overtime rounds proved decisive — he was declared champion and claimed the title and grand prize.

Submission Underground and Cross-Sport Victories

From 2016 onward, Martinez became a reliable main-event presence across the sport's leading no-gi promotions. At Submission Underground, he submitted Jake Shields via overtime choke at SUG 11 and finished CB Dollaway with an armbar at SUG 20 — two victories over well-known MMA competitors that underlined his ability to neutralize athletes from different combat sports backgrounds. At Quintet 3, representing 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu, he submitted Marcin Held with a shoulder lock, adding another highlight to a career defined by unconventional finishes.

A Sustained Run Across Promotions

His performances extended across multiple promotions without a drop in quality. At Polaris 10, he secured a rear-naked choke victory, and at Kasai Super Series Orlando he defeated Gleison Tibau on points. In December 2024, he headlined Fury Pro Grappling 12 against UFC contender Sean Brady, a booking that reflected the crossover appeal he maintained throughout his career.

April 18, 2025 brought a difficult result at WNO 27, where BJJ legend Xande Ribeiro submitted Martinez with a Kimura. Later that same year, Martinez closed his competitive chapter on a high note, winning the Masters division at the IBJJF No-Gi World Championship — the title that served as the final highlight before he announced his retirement from competition in December 2025.

Martinez competes with a style that reads as a direct expression of the 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu curriculum. Rubber Guard functions as both a control platform and a submission-hunting tool, while Truck transitions open access to the back and unconventional angles. His guard retention keeps opponents off-balance and prevents the methodical passing that neutralizes more conventional guards.

His particular danger in overtime rounds is well documented. The spiderweb and back control starting positions used in EBI-format overtime suited his skill set precisely, and his EBI 1 title win illustrated how effectively he leveraged ride-time accumulation when regulation ended without a finish. That overtime proficiency carried through his Submission Underground appearances — his choke of Jake Shields was itself secured in overtime, demonstrating that the format brought out rather than diminished his finishing instincts.

The submission variety across his career — chokes, armbars, and shoulder locks against a field ranging from MMA veterans to elite grapplers — reflects the breadth that the 10th Planet system develops when practiced with the intensity Martinez brought to drilling from his earliest days on the mat.

Addressing the Legitimacy Debate

Having trained exclusively without the gi throughout his career, Martinez developed a considered perspective on a debate that has followed no-gi practitioners — and 10th Planet athletes in particular — for years. In a September 2026 appearance on the Jits and Giggles Podcast, he addressed recurring criticism questioning whether a no-gi black belt constitutes a legitimate rank, offering competitive results as the clearest rebuttal available: "Many of us no-gi people have showed that we could beat these gi guys... if you want to call me a grappler and I'm tapping you out with submissions that are jiu-jitsu based, then that's on you, bro."

Change, Culture, and Contribution

Martinez situated the resistance he and his peers encountered not as a principled technical argument but as a predictable human response to change: "People are not comfortable with change... we're just building on that culture. We're creating more to that culture." Central to his position was the observation that no-gi competitors do not occupy a separate sport — they enter jiu-jitsu tournaments, earn jiu-jitsu credentials, and contribute to the same competitive ecosystem: "We're still competing in jiu-jitsu tournaments... No, we're adding to the culture of jiu-jitsu."

Reflecting on the broader arc as of 2026, Martinez acknowledged that hostility toward 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu and no-gi has diminished significantly without disappearing entirely: "There was a time that it was very disliked... it still happens sometimes... but at the end of the day I feel that not anymore." He credited the commercial and spectator success of no-gi events — ADCC, EBI, UFC BJJ series, and FloGrappling-featured competitions — with expanding jiu-jitsu's audience and accelerating that cultural shift.

Respect for the Gi

Despite a career spent entirely without the gi, Martinez expressed genuine respect for the other side of the discipline: "I don't have nothing against the gi. I just don't do the gi... there's so much art involved in gi jiu-jitsu." His framing positioned gi and no-gi not as rivals but as complementary expressions of the same art: "It's two different things that create one beautiful sport... we could both do this together and both grow."

The Original Pay Model

The September 2026 Jits and Giggles Podcast appearance also produced a detailed critique of how the EBI rule set has evolved — or, in Martinez's view, been diluted — as other promotions adopted its structure without preserving its essential economic architecture.

His argument centered on the original pay model, which he described as the mechanism that made early EBI matches so finish-oriented. Under that structure, a competitor was compensated only for submissions secured during regulation time: "The biggest thing about EBI is before if you didn't submit somebody in regulation, you don't get paid for that match." He illustrated the math with a concrete example — in a $20,000 purse event with four matches, finishing three opponents in regulation and one in overtime yields $15,000, while a competitor with zero regulation finishes walks away with nothing regardless of overtime performance. That financial pressure, he argued, was the engine behind the format's early reputation: "There's no penalty for it. The original EBI was that if you submitted somebody, you're getting paid. So you have to go in there and you got to submit that or else you're going home with zero dollars."

Format Borrowing Without Philosophy

Without that penalty structure, Martinez contended, the incentive calculus inverts. Competitors can manage the regulation period and treat the overtime starting position as the real contest: "Nowadays, it's just like I'll just hold you until we go to overtime." He directed the critique specifically at imitators rather than the original promotion: "And not the actual EBI, I'm talking people that do EBI rules since."

The critique did not diminish his affection for the format at its best. Martinez still ranks EBI among his three favorite rule sets alongside ADCC and Quintet, and his title at the inaugural event remains one of the defining results of his competitive career. His concern was that format borrowing without philosophical fidelity produces a superficially similar but fundamentally different competitive environment — one that rewards patience over aggression and dilutes what made the original distinctive.

10th Planet San Diego serves as the anchor of Martinez's post-competitive life, and the academy's significance runs deeper than geography. It was the site of his black belt promotion in January 2015 and became the institutional home through which he developed younger athletes in the 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu methodology throughout his competitive years. That mentorship role grew more central as his own career wound down, with Martinez investing in the next generation of practitioners coming through the San Diego program.

His trajectory — from a beginner making weekly drives to a distant academy and drilling with his girlfriend in a living room, to a black belt competing on the main cards of Polaris, Kasai, Submission Underground, and WNO — carries particular weight as an example of what the 10th Planet system can produce under sustained, unorthodox commitment. The announcement of his retirement from competition in December 2025, following the No-Gi Worlds Masters title, formalized a transition he had been navigating throughout his final competitive season.

Martinez's career spans the era when no-gi jiu-jitsu and the 10th Planet brand faced genuine institutional resistance and extends into a period when no-gi events draw mainstream combat sports audiences and EBI-format tournaments influence how an entire generation of competitors thinks about submission grappling. That arc — from the margins of the BJJ community to its main-event stages — makes him a meaningful figure in understanding how the sport's landscape shifted across the 2010s and 2020s.