Inside the bizarre world of Carjitsu — the sport where seat belt chokes and confined brawling drive fans wild
Road rage may be going mainstream.
Carjitsu, where professional brawlers battle one another inside the confined space of a sedan-size automobile, is the latest bizarre combat sport cruising its way to success, featuring fighters on four wheels permitted to use anything within the car to their advantage — including seat belts to choke out an opponent.
And while the claustrophobic concept may sound slightly insane, Carjitsu is burning virtual rubber on social media — already boasting a reported average of 5 million views per week. Celebrity fans include Keenan Thompson and Kevin Hart, New Jersey has already approved it for gambling and ESPN aired the phenomenon for the first time on the Ocho, the network’s annual weekend celebration of obscure sports, on Sunday.
“There’s something extremely visceral about watching these guys and gals go at it,” Mike Salvaris, co-founder of the Pro League Network, which owns the rights to Carjitsu, told The Post.
“If you look at some of the footage, you see some of the camera guys mouthing to the director, ‘Holy s–t, that actually happened,'” he said.
The sport was originated by a Russian grad student at Kansas State University named Vik Mikheev, in the United States to earn his Ph.D. in mathematics. A black belt in judo and Brazilian jiujitsu, he first came up with the idea of competitive grappling inside a vehicle in 2020.
The league, where fighters are smooshed into seats and crushed into dashboards, became official two years ago. It’s been full speed ahead ever since, with 30 regular contenders.
Early matches were typically filmed inside a 2005 Toyota Scion — the Scion was chosen based on safety, size and affordability, according to a league source — inside a warehouse in Branson, Missouri, but other locations and cars are now being used.
Wax on, seat belt off
The rules of engagement are quite straightforward. The sport operates using a two- to three-round system where both fighters must begin buckled into their seats — a coin flip decides who gets the driver’s side and shotgun before alternating in Round 2. The match begins when the contenders unclick simultaneously.
If a winner isn’t determined after two rounds set at three minutes time, the third starts with both fighters fastened in the back row.
Carjitsu follows the rules of Brazilian jiujitsu, which doesn’t teach punching or kicking. Instead, the focus is on painful chokeholds and bone-bending arm bars, among other techniques of grappling.
“The notion of being in a confined space like that, it opens up a whole different stream of strategies than you would normally see,” Pro League Network co-founder Bill Yucatonis told The Post, adding that safety modifications like removing airbags were made to the car.
Anything inside is up for grabs to use as leverage — though snapping anything off to use as a weapon is forbidden.
Yucatonis admitted that “each round requires quite a bit of repair” for the vehicle.
Lots of times, fighters will quickly push the front seats all the way back to create a level environment.
And it’s quite common to see seat belts intentionally wrapped around an opponent’s neck as a way to get them to tap out. Such was the case in a recent bout between Rihanna Cardiel and Miranda Rae.
“Some of it isn’t even jiujitsu — it’s just surviving in there,” fighter Kyron Bowen, who also officiates, told The Post.
In a recent bout with CJay “Groundshark” Hunter, Bowen recalled tussling “from the front seat to the passenger seat, back to the driver’s seat, then back seat, to outside the window.”
Fighters are allowed to swing out of the car — the match starts with open windows — as long as they don’t touch the ground outside the vehicle. The two referees would then reset the match.
There are also lots of unexpected things the athletes need to adjust to on the fly, such as a lack of airflow — air conditioning is not allowed.
“Eighty-five degrees of heat outside is a lot worse inside the car,” Hunter, who defeated Devon Johnson on Sunday, told The Post. “It’s a tough situation, but I love the uphill battle.”
A seat belt, too, can lock itself at the worst possible time, jamming up a fighter. Getting poked and prodded by the vehicle’s internal features is quite common, as are its grab handles snapping off mid-fight.
When it comes to the brutality of the car-tial art, nobody has yet suffered a debilitating groin injury at the mercy of the stationary gear shift. However, one fighter once had their uniform caught on the PRNDL, which forced referees to stop and reset the match.
Another challenge? There’s no real specified training you can do to be ready for a fight.
“My mindset coming into this is that I’ve been doing jiujitsu for years now — I’ve got that pretty much nailed down,” said Hunter, who’s now the sport’s No. 1 contender after Sunday’s victory.
After all, it’s still “simply squeezing someone in a way they don’t want to be squeezed.”
Bowen agreed — for the most part.
“The biggest difference is being in a seat as opposed to having a flat ground,” he said. “So it’s really about feeling out how that changes things. Once you really get that nailed down, it’s all pretty downhill from there.”
A real hit
Naturally, such an outlandish concept comes with shock and entertainment value.
Commentator JT Tilley certainly has fun with play-by-play, tossing out joking commentary about butts flying out of windows to give viewers kicks. But Carjitsu is no amateur hour, he maintained.
“We’ve got lots of UFC veterans that are interested,” the hype man said of the hardcore active athletes, as Carjitsu careens toward what seems like sustained success.
Alongside Tilley in the booth is UFC legend Mark Coleman, who balances lighthearted commentary with some real insight into the one-of-a-kind fighting.
Coleman loves Carjitsu — and will even give pep talks to participants to motivate them to bring out their inner warrior. A fighter’s usual skills can only take them so far here, he noted.
“It’s not about your belt ranking,” he told The Post.
And since the concept is so new and out there, it is not quite known just yet what the best formula for victory is — or which seat position gives a fighter the upper hand.
“It’s about how can you adapt, adjust and think outside the box and come up with ways that are going to work to win this match,” said Coleman.
There’s another aspect that Bowen said makes car fighting such a “raw” experience: a touch of reality.
Growing up in a not-great area, he explained, meant always looking over your shoulder when getting into a car.
Citing the recent rash of carjackings nationwide, Bowen said that theatrics aside, there are valuable self-defense lessons in the fights.
Coleman, in complete agreement, called the sport a “useful skill” for anyone who drives for a living.
“Uber drivers and taxi drivers,” he said, “they need to be watching this.”
