Kron Gracie has caused quite a ruckus as of late. Following his Earth dedication following victory at Rizin he’s taken his life up a notch and declared the Earth was flat on a podcast with Eddie Bravo and Eric Dubay.

But this isn’t the end of all Kron controversies.

It was just revealed a black belt visiting Kron’s academy isn’t able to wear a black belt with the traditional red bar unless it was received from either Kron or Rickson Gracie.

Instead they’re given a black belt with a white bar – kind of like the black belt female judokas wore until recently in Japan.

When prompted about the unusual black belt Brian Anthony Mendez (pictured above) responded:

Mendez has been a bjj black belt in the Ribeiro association and a judo black belt to boot:

An honor to be on the mat with @mariosperry one of my childhood BJJ hero’s #jiujitsu #brazilianjiujitsu #valetudo #zen #zenmachine #mariosperry #studio540 #jiujitsulifeo.o

A post shared by Brian (@b.anthony_mendez310) on Jan 28, 2017 at 4:04pm PST

To make things additionally interesting even Japan has dropped this tradition earlier in the month – internationally the black belt with white stripe in judo was dismissed some years ago because it was considered discriminatory. Rocket news 24 quotes:

In 1999, for example, the International Judo Federation put an end to the practice of female judoka having to wear black belts with a white stripe running lengthwise along the fabric, as opposed to the pure-black belts used by male competitors, on the grounds that the discrepancy was discriminatory.

A brown belt training under Kron clarified on reddit:

What do you think about it? Is it entirely off base for Kron Gracie to be asking black belts of other lineage to wear a different belt? 

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