{"id":118,"date":"2013-01-17T23:02:45","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T23:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/70.87.90.194\/~onzuka\/o2maa\/?page_id=118"},"modified":"2018-02-20T09:25:23","modified_gmt":"2018-02-20T09:25:23","slug":"pj-dean-bio","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/onzuka.com\/o2maaweb\/pj-dean-bio\/","title":{"rendered":"PJ Dean Bio"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PJ-Dean-fight-pose--close\"<\/a>PJ Dean grew up in Makaha, one in a family of 6 kids. He was first introduced to boxing at the tender age of 6 years old by his father. He later was brought to the legendary Waianae Boxing Club to work on his skills under the watchful eye of Coach Fred Perreira. PJ was a quick study, causing his coach to immediately put him into competition. PJ won his first two Police Activity League (PAL) championship titles at 65lbs in 1979 & 1980. PJ continued training on and off, while participating in other sports until the seventh grade.<\/p>\n

PJ started training in Tae Kwon Do, thinking it was Bruce Lee\u2019s art of \u201cJeet Kune Do.\u201d He quickly realized the mistake, but found the kicking skills of Tae Kwon Do were a great addition to his boxing skills. Being a competitor at heart, PJ saw the same results in Tae Kwon Do tournaments, training under Keith Rainwater. He immediately won two Tae Kwon Do championships in 1985 and 1986 and earned a Red belt. After his instructor closed his school and moved to the mainland, PJ went back into boxing, picking up where he left off and won his next two PAL state titles at 95lbs and 106lbs in 1987 and 1988. The dream of every young boxer is to compete and win the Golden Gloves boxing championship, however, right before PJ turned 16 years old, the age needed to compete, there was a huge fight at the Golden Gloves tournament when the fighters from Waianae got into it with fighters from the Army team. Due to this black eye on the sport, they suspended the Golden Gloves indefinitely. Due to this, PJ lost the motivation to continue training and started getting into trouble, but stayed access in sports.<\/p>\n

At the age of 18, PJ\u2019s priorities had changed due to the birth of his first child at 18, but he continued to train on and off. He jumped back into competing in Amateur boxing at 20. In 1993, he fought his way up to second place for the Hawaii State Amateur title. Dennis Alexio ignited the sport of kickboxing selling out the Neal Blaisdell Arena and that caused PJ to make the natural progression into kickboxing and amassed an impressive amateur record of 14-2.<\/p>\n

Always one to challenge himself, PJ tried his hand at MMA, a sport that has been growing rapidly in Hawaii. He took his first MMA match just to compete against one of the best strikers in Hawaii, Mark Moreno, who was knocking out a lot of fighters at that time. That match went back and forth, with Moreno pushing the ground game that he had been working on, figuring that he had the advantage. PJ\u2019s natural athletic ability partially made up for his lack of grappling skill. He lost that match, but the competitive aspects of MMA was something that he couldn\u2019t resist. He jumped in head first, but needed to improve his grappling , which he did by starting to train with Chris and Mike Onzuka at the O2 Martial Arts Academy. PJ focused the efforts that he used to obtain his boxing and Tae Kwon Do skills to Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and has been on a tear ever since. The fighter that had been a ferocious striker was now winning MMA fights due to his Jiu-Jitsu skill. He is a veteran of EliteXC, Icon Sport, and Shooto Hawaii and currently is\u00a0 purple belt in Relson Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.\u00a0 If his martial arts background and full time job was not enough, he is also the father to 8 children and significant other to Misty!<\/p>\n

Amateur Boxing Record: 32-4
\nAmateur Kickboxing Recod: 14-2
\nMMA Record: 2-3-1<\/p>\n

1979 Police Activity League (PAL) Hawaii State Champion at 65lbs
\n1980 Police Activity League (PAL) Hawaii State Champion at 65lbs
\n1985 Tae Kwon Do Hawaii State Champion (Honolulu)
\n1986 Tae Kwon Do Hawaii State Champion (Kauai)
\n1987 Police Activity League (PAL) Hawaii State Champion at 95lbs
\n1988 Police Activity League (PAL) Hawaii State Champion at 106lbs
\n2002 Amateur Fighting Competition 2: Under 200lbs 8-Man Tournament Champion (5\/23\/02)
\n2002 Punishment In Paradise Super Fight Champion
\n2002 Punishment In Paradise Super Fight Champion
\n2005 Aloha State Championships of BJJ White Belt 162 – 174 lbs Champion (11\/15\/05)
\n2010 KTI Scrappla Fest Blue Belt 174lbs Champion (5\/15\/10)
\n2010 KTI Scrappla Fest No Gi Intermediate 174lbs Champion (5\/15\/10)
\n2010 NAGA: Hawaii State Grappling Championships Blue Belt 174lbs Champion (11\/27\/10)
\n2010 NAGA: Hawaii State Grappling Championships No Gi Intermediate 180lbs Champion (11\/27\/10)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PJ Dean grew up in Makaha, one in a family of 6 kids. He was first introduced to boxing at the tender age of 6 years old by his father. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-118","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P7xGy9-1U","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onzuka.com\/o2maaweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onzuka.com\/o2maaweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onzuka.com\/o2maaweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onzuka.com\/o2maaweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onzuka.com\/o2maaweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/onzuka.com\/o2maaweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":710,"href":"https:\/\/onzuka.com\/o2maaweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118\/revisions\/710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onzuka.com\/o2maaweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}