Add The California Post on Google The Pacific Palisades is getting some of its fight back.
A martial arts studio that was destroyed in the Palisades Fire is returning under a new name, new home and with one of its former students helping lead the comeback.
Justin Caruso, who also lost his Palisades home in the blaze, has teamed up with instructors James Gavsie and Freddy Cerrato to launch LUDUS, a private Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and kickboxing gym opening Aug. 15 at Palisades Village.
Caruso, who is the son of billionaire businessman Rick Caruso, began training at MAX Impact, Gavsie’s longtime Palisades martial arts gym, after discovering it within walking distance of his home.
“I just immediately fell in love with it, fell in love with training martial arts and jiu-jitsu with them,” Caruso told The California Post.
Then the January 2025 Palisades Fire tore through the neighborhood, destroying the site and the homes of Gavsie, Cerrato and Caruso.
But martial arts soon provided Caruso with one of his first glimpses of normal life after the disaster. “One of the first days that felt normal again for me after the fires was when our community of people that trained together got together in Venice at a temporary spot,” he said.
They threw down mats and started training. “It just felt like normalcy again,” he said. “From that moment, I knew I wanted to bring this community back.”
That idea eventually became LUDUS. The three co-founders are rebuilding around the martial arts community that existed before the fire while creating a new gathering place for the community.
Gavsie, known throughout the Westside as “Mr. G,” is a sixth-degree Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt with more than 30 years of martial arts experience and will serve as LUDUS’ lead instructor. Cerrato is a first-degree Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt with more than two decades of experience across jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, boxing, judo and Kali.
Before the fire, MAX Impact drew a cross-section of the Palisades, from high school students to doctors, lawyers to police officers.
“It was people from all walks of life, which was awesome,” Caruso said. “We all just were really supportive of each other and got to know each other well.”
Now the goal is to recreate that community while much of the Palisades is still rebuilding.
A major focus will be children whose old routines and gathering places vanished in the fire. LUDUS will offer after-school Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes for children ages three to seven and eight to 12.
“Right now in the Palisades, majority of it is still burned down, all the commercial zones,” Caruso said. “There’s really nowhere for those kids to go after school or go do after-school activities.”
The gym will also offer a women’s self-defense program led by black belt instructor Anna Kemper, an active jiu-jitsu competitor and former professional athlete.
The space will feature roughly 1,000 square feet of mats, white oak finishes, floor-to-ceiling glass, built-in seating for parents and multiple heavy bags for kickboxing.
The interior was gutted, tested and cleaned before construction to ensure no smoke damage remained. For Caruso, the gym is rebuilding alongside his own effort to restore a life in the Palisades.
He had lived there for seven years when the fire hit. His wife was pregnant, and, after losing their home, the couple relocated to Newport Beach for roughly six months.
He said: “We didn’t really know what was going on, when we were going to be able to come home.”
Caruso works day-to-day with his family at Caruso and has also been involved in bringing Palisades Village back, with him working dually as a businessman and a resident who lost his own home.
He said he hopes LUDUS can give others the same escape and sense of community martial arts gave him after the fire.
“The most incredible thing about what we’re doing is we’re bringing back a local business that was lost, that was there for 20 years, that we lost in the fire,” Caruso said, “and giving people a place to go again.”
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