Mathew Veiga got beaten up in sixth grade — his bully even stopped mid-fight because his hands hurt — and his mom said: you're going to learn how to fight. That sent him to traditional karate, then years away from martial arts, then back to MMA, which led to jiu-jitsu, which led to a content universe that has quietly changed the culture of how jiu-jitsu talks about itself online. He is forty-two, currently works for UPS (not in delivery anymore), started creating content at thirty-nine, and built Oss Nation BJJ from a phone on a stick and a kitchen chair in front of a red wall into one of the most recognized pages in the sport. He co-hosts the BJJ Balance podcast every Tuesday with Kenny Wilson · @kennydoesbjj. He is an A3 — a distinction that has gone viral across his socials as a series exploring the, shall we say, structural advantages of those of us built for authority rather than agility. He is also approaching his third degree. He wants a Coral Belt. He will probably get it. He broke his rib at Master Worlds and did not compete, which he has publicly called out as the one time he let his ego get the better of him. He is not precious about anything. Everything is off the cuff. One take. This conversation was evidence of exactly that.
I was stoked going into this one and the conversation delivered exactly what I hoped — and then some. Mathew Veiga is genuinely hilarious, and I mean that as a serious compliment. The ability to be funny on command, consistently, about a subject this community takes seriously, without ever undermining the respect he clearly has for the art — that is a rare gift. But what surprised me was how much substance sits underneath the jokes. This episode is one of the most honest conversations I have had on this show about what it means to be a midlife man in jiu-jitsu: the ego, the injuries, the competitive fear, the legacy you are building for your kids whether you know it or not. I cannot wait to have him back.
For the record: Mathew is an A3. I am also an A3. This is not a complaint. This is a declaration. The A3 series on his socials has gone viral for a reason — it speaks to every one of us who showed up to pick up our gi and had to confirm that yes, we are in fact in the larger size. We are unbothered. We are powerful. We are A3s. There is no A2 energy here.
The Bully, the Karate Kid Origin, and the UPS Guy Who Became the Voice of a Community
The origin story is both relatable and hilarious, which is entirely on brand. Sixth grade. A bully who hit him hard enough that the bully himself needed a mid-fight break to rest his hands. His mom's response was not sympathy — it was: you are going to learn how to fight. So he did the karate kid thing. Literally. He became Ralph Macchio, but in his words, a little better looking. Made it to green or purple belt before karate started feeling like it was becoming — and I am paraphrasing here — not that cool. Then sports. Then UFC with his uncle. Then MMA, which led to jiu-jitsu. Then an uncle who funded the jiu-jitsu because Mathew was broke. Then everything else.
Before content creation there was the Sports Trolls — a sports podcast he ran with his friend James that was, by his own account, wild. He learned his voice there. He learned the camera. He learned how to turn the volume up on his personality without losing who he was. He describes it like learning to cut a pro wrestling promo — and if you have watched any of his content you understand immediately how that training informs everything he does. When he arrived at jiu-jitsu content, he already knew how to talk to himself, how to work a single take, and how to find the angle that makes people stop scrolling.
"I looked around and I asked — where's the Pat McAfee for jiu-jitsu? Where's that guy? And I was like... I already am this guy. And I'm making people laugh in the gym. Why can't I just put this out there?"
— Professor Mathew Veiga · @oss_nation_bjj · BJJ Balance PodcastHe started with memes. One went viral. He built a culture of fun inside a community that already had more than enough content about respect and technique and lineage — which he genuinely loves and honours, but which was not the gap he was filling. The gap was the locker room. The American sports energy that says jiu-jitsu is hard and serious and also — when the professor is not looking — absolutely ridiculous in the best possible way. He filled that gap. Oss Nation was created.
A3 and Proud: The Viral Series That Every One of Us Understands Immediately
Mathew and I are both A3s. I said this at the top of the show and I will repeat it here without embarrassment. The A3 series on his socials has gone viral and it is not difficult to understand why: it is the bit that every larger practitioner has been waiting for someone to run. The premise is simple and devastating in its accuracy — A3 is an identity, a way of moving through the gym, a declaration that we carry our authority not in agility but in presence, and anyone suggesting we look A2 can mind their business.
When I sent him a video before recording saying I had just signed up an A2 that morning, he knew exactly what I was talking about. The series started with a simple observation at Worlds — that he had lost some weight, which was going against his own thing, and people were saying he was looking A2. The response to those comments was not defensiveness. It was: post them all. Embrace it. Turn it into content. Which is, honestly, the most Mathew Veiga thing he could have done with the criticism.
What makes the A3 series land beyond its surface comedy is what it actually says underneath: you belong here at whatever size you are. The sport is for you. Your build is not a disqualification — it is a feature. There is a style of jiu-jitsu available to the man who brings pressure and weight and grip strength, and that style is legitimate and beautiful and does not require a body type that the content algorithm typically centres. He is speaking for a significant portion of this community that was previously mostly being used as the human shield in drilling videos. The A3 series gave them a flag to wave. We are waving it.
The Hot Take He Stands Behind: Gi Jiu-Jitsu Is Better and Modern No-Gi Has Become One-Dimensional
Mathew is a gi guy and he is not apologetic about it. He loves no-gi, trains both, but has a specific critique of modern high-level no-gi that I found myself agreeing with more than I expected to: at the highest levels of no-gi competition, the game has become so leg-lock oriented that the variety of what you see has narrowed significantly. Lapel drags, guard passing, judo, snap downs, spins to the back — the gi delivers all of this in a format that is fast and sophisticated if you know what you are watching, and slow and incomprehensible if you do not.
"The gi is so slow? It's slow if you don't know what you're watching. Grappling in the UFC looks slow to the guy who wants them to stand up and punch. To someone who trains? He's got outside De la Riva, he's setting the grip — it's fast. You just have to know what to look for."
— Professor Mathew Veiga · @oss_nation_bjj · BJJ Balance PodcastHis read on why no-gi has taken cultural priority over gi is sharp: MMA gave no-gi its clout, and a significant number of no-gi practitioners are, in his framing, living off the visibility that MMA fighters provided rather than the independent appeal of the no-gi game itself. The gi, in his estimation, produces a more complete grappler at every level below the absolute apex of no-gi competition. The A2s — the smaller competitors — are the ones running the double guard pull scissor fights in no-gi. At the heavier, more powerful divisions, what you get in the gi is exactly the kind of multi-layered, technically diverse grappling exchange that the sport should be showcasing.
He has this take and he stands in it. I respect it. I think it will generate some disagreement in comments, which Mathew would tell you is healthy algorithm.
I Bitched Out at Master Worlds. He Said It First and He Said It Directly.
This is the section that earned the most respect from me in this whole conversation. Mathew broke his rib before Master Worlds. He pulled himself out. He was there — watching his teammates compete, watching them win and lose — and he admitted, directly and without softening it, that he let his ego get the best of him. Not in the way most people use that phrase. Not in the sense of overconfidence. In the other direction: he was afraid to compete undertrained, afraid to lose on camera with his following watching, afraid that a bad performance in front of the jiu-jitsu world would produce highlight clips he did not want to see.
"I bitched out. I should have just said — send it. If I lost, I lost, better man beat me. I'd have been more proud of my weekend if I'd said yeah, I went out there, I lost, and it is what it is. But I didn't. And I'm owning that."
— Professor Mathew Veiga · @oss_nation_bjj · BJJ Balance PodcastThe lesson is not to compete injured. The lesson is about recognising the difference between a smart decision and an ego-driven one — and being honest with yourself about which one you are actually making in the moment. He could have entered and lost with a broken rib and half a camp. He knows that. He is at peace with it. And by saying it plainly on this show and on his own platforms, he gave permission to every other person who has made the same call — for the same reasons — to be honest about it too. There is no lying on the mat. There is also no lying in the post-match review of your own decision-making. This is the A3 energy applied to something that actually matters.
The Alpha Dad Is Going Extinct. That Is Why You Have to Stay in the Fight.
The staying dangerous after forty answer from Mathew Veiga is one of my favourites in 115 episodes — not because it is the most technical or the most philosophically dense, but because it is exactly how this man thinks and exactly what this community needs to hear from someone who says it the way he says it.
"Staying dangerous after forty means you're leading by example in your household. The alpha dad is going extinct. The computer dad is here. There is still a place for the guy in the neighbourhood — when the internet goes out and the world ends, whose house are they coming to? There's a place for the guy who can still lift the couch."
— Professor Mathew Veiga · @oss_nation_bjj · BJJ Balance PodcastHe is not romanticising violence or advocating for anything extreme. He is making a point about presence, example, and the particular kind of man who quietly anchors a family and a neighbourhood without requiring the world to acknowledge it. The guy who can still lift the couch when someone needs to move. The guy whose wife drops his name at work — he trains jiu-jitsu, he's a purple belt — and it lands differently than anything else she could say about him. The guy who shows up to the school pickup line in his comp team rashguard and does not need to explain it.
His instruction to anyone in their forties who has already decided the athletic chapter is closed: you have forty more years. Your athletic career is not over. It never has to be over. Find yourself a 4 AM or a 6 AM where you can get it in before the rest of the world wakes up. Come home as everything you promised your family you could be. The alpha dad is going extinct and that is precisely why this is the moment to be him, not the moment to sit down.
His goal is a Coral Belt. He wants to be the grandpa in the wheelchair with the Coral Belt. Hunched over, can't walk great, but in the corner of the gym still watching rounds. He gets that from somewhere real. And that clarity about where he is going — even framed as a joke about being broken by the time he gets there — is the most serious thing about this conversation.
One Life
He was going to give me one word. He gave me a philosophy instead. I am not complaining.
One life.
Life is full of seasons, he said. Friendships change. The world changes. The circumstances around you shift in ways you did not choose and cannot fully control. None of that should determine who you are. If you stay true to yourself — through the seasons, through the change, through the parts where everything you thought was stable moves — the seasons will change again and come back around. And when they do, you will still be yourself. You will not have deceived the one person you cannot escape: you.
There is no lying on the mat. Mathew said that and it is the cleanest summary of what jiu-jitsu does to ego that I have heard in this building. You can tell yourself any story you want about who you are — on the street, in the office, at the school pickup line — but when you grab that lapel and the round starts, the story disappears. What remains is the truth. And if you have been living honestly, the truth is not something you need to hide from.
One life. Stay true to who you are inside it. That is all the philosophy you need and it happens to be completely consistent with everything Mathew Veiga produces, posts, podcasts, and performs. It is not a content strategy. It is just him.
Cannot wait to have him back. This one was too good to be the only one.
Fuel for the A3s and Everyone Else
Real grass-fed protein from regenerative farmers. No shortcuts, no synthetic filler. The same standard Mathew would respect and the same standard this show holds for everything it puts in front of you. Code JOSHBUTTON for 15% off at lineageprovisions.com.
Light Health · Luca Nero Frames · Sleep Like Your Recovery Depends on It
I wear the Biospectral Luca Nero frames with yellow day lenses every day on the computer, on the phone, and under LEDs. My orange night lenses just arrived. For the midlife grappler getting after it with a beat-up body — the recovery window you get at night is the whole game. Protect it. Code JOSHBUTTON for 15% off at biospectralsystems.com.
Premium Mastic Gum · Greek Island of Chios · Jaw Strength · Brain Health
Mathew talked about the locker room, the culture, the things grapplers do that nobody outside the gym understands. Greco Gum is the kind of product that belongs in that world — premium mastic gum from the Greek island of Chios, jaw training and recovery, brain health benefits through trigeminal activation, and the kind of real-source quality that this community should expect from everything it uses. Code IAMJOSHBUTTON for 10% off at grecogum.com.
@oss_nation_bjj · BJJ Balance Every Tuesday · YouTube · TikTok
Instagram is @oss_nation_bjj. TikTok is @oss_nation_bjj. YouTube is Oss Nation BJJ at @ossnationbjj9920. The BJJ Balance podcast with Kenny Wilson · @kennydoesbjj drops every Tuesday — if you are not already listening you are late and you should fix that immediately. And follow the A3 series on his page. We are there. We are proud. There is no A2 energy here.
Free Guides: Ancestral Nutrition | Midlife Grappler's Survival Guide | The Recovery Protocol | Midlife Hormone Reset
Stay on the Mats. Stay Dangerous. Stay Hard to Kill in Midlife.
