A coral belt under Rickson Gracie, Pedro Sauer has joined forces with the Gracie Academy (Ryron and Rener Gracie).

In this video, they announce the partnership between the Pedro Sauer Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Association and the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy.

Theis means that all Pedro Sauer academies will be urged to become ‘Certified Training centres’. They will be tied to the Gracie Academy and follow the same curriculum.

Ryron and Rener Gracie analyze the most common blue belt promotion practices in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, and the impact each path has on the students.

They discuss the three critical changes that were made to the Gracie Academy curriculum in order to preserve the art as a method of self-defense and to ensure that it remains accessible to the people who need it the most.

They modified:

– The Curriculum
– Sparring, this means no sparring for white belts (at all).
– Blue belt test (official blue belt and technical blue belt)

The news comes 1 day after Rickson Gracie explained in an interview, that it was him who convinced his nephew Rener Gracie to stop promoting students online.
Rickson on online promotion and Gracie University:

“It’s absurd. There can be no online belt promotion. After I read an article on Rener Gracie talking about Gracie University, saying that he promoted online students to blue belt, I had a confrontation with him. I said that if he continued to do this, I would denigrate his image, saying that he was a charlatan. And after that, he reconsidered, and thought that the idea did not make sense anymore. The blue belt is the most important Jiu-Jitsu. White to blue, it is the stage of enlightenment. The blue belt needs to be a confident guy that is a tough guy that can handle an aggression. And for that, he can not get a belt over the Internet.”

Rickkon Gracie and Pedro Sauer

Pedro Sauer isan 8th degree Brazilian jiu jitsu coral belt and a student of the legendary Rickson Gracie. Pedro Sauer is revered as one of the pioneers of the gentle art in the United States, having moved to the northern hemisphere country in the early 1990’s. Since arriving, Master Sauer has captured a legion of followers through lectures and workshops as well as for his skill as an instructor, having developed several high level black belts of his own. In 2005 he was voted by an online poll as the “Best Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Instructor” in the world. See full biography on BJJ Heroes.