Miha Perhavec

Miha was born far away from San Diego in Kranj, Slovenia. He grew up under and in the Alps trying a variety of sports during his childhood. Around the age of 9 or 10, he began training judo in his hometown.

During his mid-teen years, he trained with the Slovenian Olympic judo team, which has produced 5 Olympic medals since 2004, with 2 golds. Despite training at such a high level and intensity, he didn’t want to continue with judo. There were a number of reasons, the main one being the constant changing of the rules that made judo a less complete martial art.

At age 18 Miha joined a local MMA club with dreams to become an accomplished MMA fighter. That journey lasted 3-4 years during which Miha cleaned out the local amateur MMA scene, amassing a record of 11-1 with 11 first-round finishes (mostly submissions).

More importantly, the MMA club also offered jiu jitsu as a part of the curriculum and after 4 years of training both Miha decided to not get punched in the head for a living.

So began his full-time jiu jitsu career.

During his jiu jitsu journey, Miha moved out of Slovenia where the scene was very small (as the country itself). His path took him to live in Warsaw, Poland; Oslo, Norway, and Dublin, Ireland.

While living abroad Miha started competing all over Europe, eventually reaching the World Championships in Los Angeles and Abu Dhabi as well. During this run, he amassed 5 IBJJF Nogi European Open medals, including 3 silvers. He also won multiple IBJJF Open competitions, getting the coveted Double Gold in a couple of those outings.

After a few years of living and training in Dublin, Miha and his wife Emma began a 2-year long around-the-World trip, which literally took them around the World two and a half times. But that’s a story for a different web page.

This trip gave Miha the chance, to train and teach jiu jitsu in many different cities and countries and also allowed him to sharpen his skills by competing internationally. This led to him claiming some very exotic titles, such as the 2018 New Zealand Nogi Absolute Champion.

The present
Recently Miha relocated to sunny San Diego at the invitation of Legion’s Head Instructor Keenan Cornelius and started instructing here at Legion HQ, offering his vast experience to our members. In 2022 Miha created the 5-Week Beginner Course and made it the starting point for anyone joining Legion. In August of 2024 this course is reaching a milestone of the 50th cohort. A total of almost 1000 people have entered the course with hundreds still training as a result. 

In 2024, coach Miha was also a judge at the revolutionary grappling event the Craig Jones Invitational #1, which introducted $2.3 million in prizes and achieved over 3 million views in 3 days on YouTube.