Watch Members Of MEGADETH Train Jiu-Jitsu Before Final Show Of ‘The Metal Tour Of The Year’

BLABBERMOUTH.NET

MEGADETH guitarist Kiko Loureiro has uploaded behind-the-scenes footage from the band's last show of 2021, which took place on September 28 at The Armory in Minneapolis, Minneapolis as part of "The Metal Tour Of The Year" with LAMB OF GOD, TRIVIUM and HATEBREED. The seven-minute clip includes footage of Loureiro and fellow MEGADETH members Dave Mustaine and Dirk Verbeuren training with Professor Reggie Almeida of Spring Hill, Tennessee's Gracie Barra Brazilian jiu-jitsu school, who apparently traveled with MEGADETH on the entire tour. In January 2021, Almeida promoted Mustaine to a purple belt in jiu-jitsu almost two years after the MEGADETH leader earned the first stripe on his blue belt. As the middle belt, purple is when a jiu jitsu player begins to form his or her identity within the grand scheme of the sport. In a 2007 interview, Mustaine said he started training taekwondo in 1999 in Arizona and then moved to California, where he lived until a few yeas ago. "Before taking up taekwondo, I practiced kung fu and other martial arts," he said. Mustaine told The Quietus in 2010 that he had "a first degree in Ukidokan karate. My sensei — Benny 'The Jet' Urquidez — has the style of karate, kung-fu, aikido, judo, ju-jitsu, taekwondo, Greco-Roman wrestling, Muay Thai boxing and American boxing," he said. "So it's all those things rolled into one. It's a nine-style discipline. My second black belt is in Songham taekwondo and I was an assistant instructor in that style, and then I taught it privately for a while." Mustaine and his family moved to a suburn of Nashville in October 2014 after living in Fallbrook, California for a couple of years.