I am going to offend someone in this article and you can try responding like the Dude: Yeah? Well, you know, that’s just like uh, your opinion, man…

Jiu Jitsu has evolved a lot since it’s historical ancestry as a way for samurai to kill armored warriors with their hands. It’s a social club, a modern sport and a fight club for the disillusioned office peon to strike back at modern contemporary society. It has consistently changed and be based off pragmatic concepts, not dogma. Let’s explore some ideas.

1. The ending of the world championships for non-blackbelts, or at least renaming it.

John Danaher reportedly supports this concept as well. What is a world chamipon white belt? It’s a blue belt. It’s like being the world champion of the after work baseball team, it’s silly. The sandbagging that goes into this event is systemic; athletes are held back at blue belt, well into their purple belt time in order to win IBJJF worlds. If you win blue belt worlds, you are a 100% a purple belt and probably a great purple belt who will win many regional tournaments. Lastly, the talent of the world isn’t showing up to southern California for the lower belts. It’s very hard for Brazilians to get visas to the united states, among other countries. It should be renamed to Sub-Champion internationals or really anything other than “worlds”.

2. Wash your belts you stinky reprobates.

I’m embarrassed I need to say this. It’s no secret that BJJ gyms are absolute cesspools of bacteria and if you’ve done your time on the mats, you probably have one staph infection under your belt. My friend’s father died of a staph infection. There is no benefit of this tradition.

3. Ending the Gauntlet.

Traditions without utility deserve scrutiny and this needs to be reevaluated. If someone has earned a promotion, they earned it through a lot of previous blood and sweat – getting whipped by everyone is strange. Especially white belts whipping a newly promoted brown belt. What have they done to deserve to haze an upper belt? The best promotion ceremony I saw was in Fairbanks, Alaska and they made a newly promoted purple belt roll with the entire class, from start until submission.

4. The overzealous usage of affiliations in BJJ :

Related:

Are Jiu-Jitsu Affiliations Just a Ponzi Scheme?

5. Allowing the IBJJF to behave like a regulatory authority.

They have no authority over BJJ. Their rules are cute ideas and I think training towards these rules is a shame, albeit necessary if you want to win competitions. But it shouldn’t be seen as the golden standard. Knee reaping is a bullshit rule and a puple belt can be trusted with equal submission rules as a blackbelt.

If you think my ideas suck, hit me up at @BJJMercenary on instagram or comment below