A question for the black belts

[Tim Elliott]

Those sites are drowning in people who just don't understand anything. Its too hard to trawl through all that ignorance to find the gems. The forums like a gym. If its a real gym where people actually spar with each other, then its likely its full of good people. If there is no actual fighting, it will be all posing and egos. Most of those people seem like they need punched in the face or choked out, because they never have been. I like to be submitted regularly so I don't end up like that.

[Apperz]

It is stupid. I imagine the 'upset' people are the coaches of the blue belts that the white belt beat.

[Toppy]

The comments about him self promoting by competing, and showing disrespect to the legit blue belts he competed against I found particularly funny. Dare I mention that 10th Planet guys are cool with it??? Lol

[Luke Noormets]

Good on him I say! Possibly needs to work on his time management skills but his jiu jitsu sounds solid!

[Kurzy]

Last tournament I rolled in, I entered white belt Gi and intermediate for NoGi. I missed my Gi division and lost on points in the NoGi matches (was always working for subs and dgaf about points)
The point is, intermediate is basically blue belt division. As a two year white belt I was rolling against guys with 5, 5 and 7 years experience.

[Joseph Hachey]

Did he wear a blue belt while he competed? Is that the issue?

[NotReady]

BJJ rankings are so subjective, what is the difference between an experienced white belt and a brand new blue belt? That is going to vary person to person, school to school.

Even if one athlete beats another, that could indicate one is more physically gifted, or trains harder, than the other. Or is a better competitor. It's not always that the winner has greater technical knowledge.

If you compete long enough you are going to beat people that have trained longer than you, lose to people that have trained less than you, and everything in between. If you compete no-gi you are almost guaranteed to be competing in multi-belt divisions.

I don't think it is disrespectful to compete up. Part of being an upper belt is defending your rank, and giving upcoming belts the opportunity to give lower ranks the chance to prove they belong right up there with you.

In some ways it seems these critics are frightened that their rank does not magically guarantee victory, or that in some way this athlete's success takes away from their own accomplishments.

[Mario Lopez Alvarez]

I'm not black a beltout but I thought you guys might find this interesting: a local grappling tourney organizer devides competitors by weight, not by belt. If you want to compete no gi you're going to go up against all comers. I really like this format. 11 sandbaggers and gives you a chance to practice against anybody

Thoughts?

[Apperz]

I saw that the guy apparently said something along the lines of 'I am going to be promoted next week when my instructor is back off holiday'. If that is true, I can see an issue with that far more than the actual competing.

[Keith Kavanagh]

The comments about him self promoting by competing, and showing disrespect to the legit blue belts he competed against I found particularly funny. Dare I mention that 10th Planet guys are cool with it??? Lol

I competed at the blue belt division on saturday to try it out and test my skills. I don't train in the gi enough to grade but I felt like I was ready, took home bronze. Won my first match and then had his coach congratulate me and told me to try get up to his club, then told me 2 days after that it was disrespectful to my team and my coach.

Self promoting wasn't my intention, I was testing the water.