Most of us have had a chance to roll with a strange white belt. Often, we glance down at their belt color and made a quick calculation of what to expect in the roll.
But then we get our grips in and we find ourselves immediately in deep water with an experienced and skilled opponent!
Usually this “white belt” is an experienced wrestler, no-gi submission grappler, MMA fighter, or black belt in judo who has put on a white belt for the kimono class in BJJ.
They have the fundamental grapplers’ skills of base, pressure, balance, awareness, and mat strength in abundance and the white belt is NO indication of their level of experience.
This is one of the reasons why grappling tournaments stipulate that you may be a white belt in BJJ, but your judo black belt or several pro MMA fights will bump you up into the blue belt or advanced divisions.
I recall a couple of stories about BJJ guys being fooled by belts.
1) I was teaching an advanced class and half of the guys were blue belts.
A quiet, soft-spoken but solidly built guy joins the BJJ class and executes the warm-up drills smoothly.
As an instructor, I can watch you shrimp and do break falls and get a pretty decent idea of your experience level even before you start rolling.
When the rolling starts, the new white belt demonstrates really solid base and balance, and none of the blue belts could sweep him.
He didn’t have good guard passes, but his pressure was causing all kinds of problems for the blue belts.
What was going on?!?
Turns out the quiet, humble guy was a second Dan in judo and decided to try some jiu-jitsu.
The frustrated blue belts were relieved to hear that the new white belt was not some beginner with super natural talent!
2) Another friend of mine (good competitive purple belt) traveled to Brazil to train at the Carlson Gracie Academy.
He couldn’t wait to get in some rolls and see how his skills stacked up!
The first guy asked him to roll and my buddy wanted to show his skills…only to have his guard quickly passed and get clock choked!
It happened a couple of times and my friend was scratching his head asking “What the hell?!? I know I am jet lagged, but didn’t expect this!”
He took a second, closer look at the blue belt and suddenly realized that was NOT a blue belt.
It was a HEAVILY faded black belt and his rolling partner was none other than former World Absolute BJJ Champion Amaury Bitetti!
Sometimes the belt lies and you have to be ready for all of your training opponents!
So Now I Got My Blue Belt,…Now What??
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