Brian Cimins was born in 1976 in Wayne, New Jersey.

 

Cimins is CEO and Founder of The Grapplers Company, Inc., producer of Grapplers Quest, a world famous ground fighting competition called by Grappling Magazine in June 2006 as “The Greatest Grappling Show on Earth” and a world renown motivational speaker, Life Coach and Strategic Interventionist specializing in Crisis Management.

 

Grapplers Quest has proudly hosted more than one hundred UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) roster fighters and Ultimate Fighter (Spike TV’s TUF) contestants including six UFC champions, BJ Penn, Matt Hughes, Frank Mir, Frankie Edgar, Matt Serra, and Ricco Rodriguez. In 2009, Grapplers Quest partnered with Zuffa, LLC and was named the official Grappling Tournament of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s MMA supershow, UFC Fan Expo.

 

In 2010, Cimins landed the first international television deal for the sport of grappling with FightNow TV and their 10.5 million homes throughout North America as Executive Producer of “The Best of Grapplers Quest”, a 26-episode, 3-year deal, the first of its kind. In 2011, Cimins licensed the UFC Fan Expo brand name and created the first internationally distributed 5-DVD “Best of Grapplers Quest at UFC Fan Expo”, landing distribution with iTunes and YouTube rental program at: http://LiveGrapplingcom.

 

Grapplers Quest was Brian Cimins’ senior year Strategic Marketing and Public Relations projects from The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, graduating class of 1998. During his senior year, the now infamous workaholic apartment E-30 at Stockton College became Grapplers Quest’s think tank where Cimins assembled a genius team of young visionaries to help make his dream a reality.

Web and Game development guru and app master, Alex Britez created the web-based email marketing and community web site (http://Grapplers.com) under Cimins’ direction becoming the first company in the industry online. Britez and Cimins hosted the first ever live web streamed event in 1999 with Spider Partners, a web-based technology consulting firm. They developed the first ever online

tournament registration system and “grappling superstore” in 2000 for credit card transactions, another industry first, plus offered streaming photos live from a still camera at the event on April 24, 1999, another industry first.

 

Photographer Sean Ranieri (http://SeanRanieri.com) shot and edited the poster boards and first-ever promotional materials for the sport of grappling, now another photo master, Eric Zippe (http://EZippe.com) captures our grappling history through a lens along with videography master, Jim Kearns, who won “Best Videography and Photography Award in 2011″, one of Syracuse Channel 9 News best kept secrets.

College roommates and best friends, Javier Castillo and Matt Gabbianelli served as grappling training and stand-up fighting partners for Cimins in the now infamous racquetball courts of the old Stockton College Gymnasium, where Grapplers Quest was truly born, on the old wrestling mats of Stockton in Pomona, New Jersey. Cimins started researching the sport in 1994, after training in Russian Sambo, Judo and Wrestling in 1993 as a freshman in college.

 

After running several in-house tournaments from 1996-1998, Cimins finally took his show to the national level and on April 24th, 1999, the 1st ever Grapplers Quest hosted 298 competitors and 900 spectators, the first ever 100% Submission Grappling tournament in the United States in Montclair, New Jersey. It was originally scheduled at Montclair State University for the same date, but after review by the Board, they denied our “brutal submission sport”, canceling our event. Ironically, almost cosmically, Montclair High School was available for the same date, and the rest is grappling history.

 

Cimins was also the promoter for The Abu Dhabi World Submission Wrestling Championships from 2005-2007 and developed and created the now famous ADCC branded logo redesigned by Cimins himself in 2004. In 2007, Cimins brought the ADCC World Championships to Trenton, New Jersey.  In May 2009, Grapplers Quest was hired to create UFC Fan Expo’s 1st grappling tournament, July 10-11, 2009 at Mandalay Bay events center in Las Vegas. It was a historic moment for grappling when 30,000 fans witnessed our sport potentially for the first time. In 2010, the UFC, Mr. Olympia, and Europa Super shows all chose Grapplers Quest as their key strategic partner for Grappling.

 

In March 2009, Brian Cimins produced the first “FIGHT EXPO”, a blend of MMA, Grappling and Extreme Sports for a Great Cause benefiting the Make a Wish foundation.

 

In April 2007, Cimins co-founded ‘Grappling Autism’ a national fundraising campaign to benefit families of autistic children through 501c3 registered charity, AutismRadio. For information on Autism, visit: http://AutismRadio.org.