
Originally Posted by
Clint lawrence
if some one can explain to me how the hell bj got his black belt in 3 years i will eat a lock of your hair cookie
I've read his book, and in it he explains that when he was 17, he moved to California to train with Ralph Gracie and basically that's all he did while he was there: train BJJ all day, and think about it all day. Ralph eventually promoted him to Purple Belt before he ended up transferring over to Nova Uniao, which he thought was not going to be a big deal that he was training with them but apparently Ralph took offense that BJ trained with them while he was in Vegas.
BJ got promoted to brown and black belt while with Nova Uniao, due to his outstanding knowledge and utilization against high level guys who he beat pretty often. He got promoted to black belt, if memory serves me correctly, right before he was slated to compete at the Mundials; I believe when he competed and WON the Mundials as a black belt at age 20, that was the first (and only) time he ever competed in BJJ competition as a black belt.