Is this guy legit, or a con artist?

[choke_yo_ass_out]

I found this thread randomly and thought I would share some facts to clear up a lot of misinformation in this thread.

Tom Cicero trained under Ralph Gracie and Batata at least until purple belt in Mountain View. I'm not sure where he received his brown or black belts. He could've received his brown from Ralph, but I can't confirm since I left Ralph's by then. He was there the same time as many of the Ralph Gracie black belts teaching in San Jose today, including Dave Camarillo, Mike Prudencio (AKA, One World), Alex Kahnbabian (AKA).

He also trained under Adilson Bita Lima (soon 7th degree) and Marco Nascimento (5th degree) for a period of time (maybe a year?). Tom did not receive a black belt from either Bita or Marco and is not part of Pitbull BJJ.

Pitbull BJJ is legit. Bita has over 120 black belts (almost all in Teresopolis, Brazil), including many world champions.

Bita is the founder of Pitbull BJJ and Marco (Bita's first black belt) runs Pitbull BJJ in the US. Both are insanely legit. Anyone questioning Bita's or Pitbull's legitimacy is uninformed. Bita has old ties to the Gracie family through Gracie Barra and from growing up in Teresopolis, Brazil. Any BJJ old timer can vouch for Bita (e.g., Ralph, Renzo, Rickson, Carlinhos, JJM, Drac, Robson M, etc).

[choke_yo_ass_out]

I found this thread randomly and thought I would share some facts to clear up a lot of misinformation in this thread.

Tom Cicero trained under Ralph Gracie and Batata at least until purple belt in Mountain View. I'm not sure where he received his brown or black belts. He could've received his brown from Ralph, but I can't confirm since I left Ralph's by then. He was there the same time as many of the Ralph Gracie black belts teaching in San Jose today, including Dave Camarillo, Mike Prudencio (AKA, One World), Alex Kahnbabian (AKA).

He also trained under Adilson Bita Lima (soon 7th degree) and Marco Nascimento (5th degree) for a period of time (maybe a year?). Tom did not receive a black belt from either Bita or Marco and is not part of Pitbull BJJ.

Pitbull BJJ is legit. Bita has over 120 black belts (almost all in Teresopolis, Brazil), including many world champions.

Bita is the founder of Pitbull BJJ and Marco (Bita's first black belt) runs Pitbull BJJ in the US. Both are insanely legit. Anyone questioning Bita's or Pitbull's legitimacy is uninformed. Bita has old ties to the Gracie family through Gracie Barra and from growing up in Teresopolis, Brazil. Any BJJ old timer can vouch for Bita (e.g., Ralph, Renzo, Rickson, Carlinhos, JJM, Drac, Robson M, etc).

[Jerry Walker]

^^^and then double posted, 94 minutes apart...

[Damian J]

Joao Cunha had a Pitbull BJJ school down here in SD for a long time. He's legit. It was a super tough school. It's gone now. Some crazy legal shit happened or something. But, isn't Dave Camarillo up there in San Jose, too. Always really liked his style.

[TaylorWolf]

If you are in San Jose you would be an absolute fool to not drop everything and take the Light Rail down to Santa Teresa and Bernal to train at AKA HQ …ASAP! That gym truly breeds champions.

The thing I miss most are the once-per-week "Marathon Rolls"… TEN five-minute rounds, 1 min break in between, 1 hour. You keep track of your subs, and how many times you got subbed. After class you do 10 pushups for every time you got subbed. (max 100) …then they go around the room and you get to GIVE OUT 10 push-ups for every sub. (You can get sweet revenge on that HW that ground your skull into powder lol)

[Aaron Jude]

This throws up some red flags, he probably earned his belt online from Rener and Rioron

[Keith D]

Honestly, if a person is unable to go into detail about their belt lineage, or get offended by you asking, its usually because they have something to hide. Take a look at the yelp page you posted in the original question.. Some horror stories in some of the reviews.