Ari Sub 101 - keith Owens Statement

delt16

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Just posted on another forum by Keith Owen about Ari

Keith Owen talks about Ari Bolden - Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Gear Forums

My name is Keith Owen and I'm a black belt under Professor Pedro Sauer.

Ari Bolden of Submissions 101 is one of my new BJJ Gi Affiliates! I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself to the Submissions 101 group and to clarify some discrepancies in a press release that I had made public earlier.

I have wrestled with Ari extensively and watched him roll in my class and I had originally told Ari that I would test and most likely promote Ari to a 4 stripe blue belt. Ari has been training for over 6 years in grappling and jiu-jitsu,I have seen numerous videos of his moves and I was comfortable in my assessment of him.

I have since reluctantly reconsidered my position on this matter and called him and told him that for now he needs to start out at a lower belt level. I haven't decided how many stripes that Ari will test for but as it stands it will not be four, even though he is a 10th Planet Purple shirt.

Ari was fine with this. He has never brought up the subject of rank or even given me his feelings on where he should be ranked. He has merely reported what I told him and then I went and changed my mind. It is by no means his fault, but mine and I apologize to Ari for the discrepancy.

The reason I changed my mind is because Ari is going to have to do things the way hard way even though his level is very high. Ari has received much unfair criticism from a few malcontents who will stop at nothing to lie and make things up about him and his background. It crosses the border on slander and libel!

An example of this is when they said that only white belts were allowed at Ari's seminar he had at my school a few months ago. In reality we had one brown belt from out of town, two purple belts, a whole group of blue belts, a couple MMA guys and just a few white belts. These keyboard warriors will stop at nothing to make up fabrications. One should put a question mark by everything they post. They kept saying they were going to show up to see for themselves. Nothing. Too busy typing I guess.

Ari and I have decided to take the teeth out of these liars by making his journey harder then the average students so there can be no debate!

Eddie Bravo and I have informed Ari that he will need to compete in tournaments and provide video on the internet. As a show of solidarity I have decided to return to competition as well so that no one can dispute the validity of Keith Owen and Pedro Sauer Jiu-Jitsu.

In the distant end Ari will be "legitimized" with a black belt from two legitimate bjj instructors and will have a successful website and these liars will have about 9000 posts on some bjj forum to their credit. They should be out training or with girlfriends but people do what they do.

Let me say that Ari Bolden is one of the most honest and decent people I have met. It is my proud honor (and really a no brainer) to take him as a student. I see a lot of physical potential in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for Ari and you will be seeing good things out of him in the future.

This will probably be my last letter on the subject of Ari. We are now going to get down to the business of getting he and his students tuned up! I will be in Victoria on August 21st for a seminar and testing. Its very exciting time!

Yours in Jiu-Jitsu,

Keith Owen
Pedro Sauer Black Belt
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu - Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Moves
 
I'll believe the competition part when I see it!

For some reason the mods removed the other thread to the wasteland - you think someone was upset by too much truth being revealed? Or because the "keyboard warriors" were just lying?

Ari will get destroyed as a blue belt in competition. I've never seen video of keith rolling or competing so I don't know about him. I sincerely doubt either of them will compete any time soon though.
 
btw, while looking to see if keith owen had any competition experience I found this...wtf????

Keith would like to acknowledge publicly the people who have had a profound effect on his development both in and out of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and who he admires greatly!

* Professor Pedro Sauer - The Best of the Best
* Professor Sergio Penha
* Ricardo Peries
* Allen Hopkins
* Dean Heileman-Rest in Peace
* Bart Smith
* Shawn Weaver
* Matt Strack
* Mitch Coats
* Stephan Kesting
* Rorion Gracie - Made Jiu-Jitsu Possible in the U.S.
* Jorge Jimenez
* Sylvio Behring
* Lowell Anderson
* Craig Kukuk
* Gene Simco
* Royce Gracie-For Stepping into the ring
* Big John McCarthy-Let's Get It On!!
* Tren Long
* Matt Owen
* Jim Pardy
* Carl Skalavos-"The Champ"
* Hugh M. Suenaga
* Rob Namer
* Eddie Edmunds
* Jean Jacque Machado
* James Gardner
* Johnny "One Eye"
* Bear Grylls
* Joe Jones
* Eddie Bravo
* Shirlane Owen-His Awesome Wife

A guy publicly acknowledges probably the biggest fraud in BJJ for having a "profound effect on his development both in and out of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and who he admires greatly" and then allies himself with another widely known fraud (Ari) - and calls ari a decent and honest person? When it has been proved otherwise?
 
btw, while looking to see if keith owen had any competition experience I found this...wtf????



A guy publicly acknowledges probably the biggest fraud in BJJ for having a "profound effect on his development both in and out of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and who he admires greatly" and then allies himself with another widely known fraud (Ari) - and calls ari a decent and honest person? When it has been proved otherwise?


But I'm on that list also, so that cancels out Simco
 
On the subject:

1) Ari will not get props from me for coming clean. Finally accepting the truth about ones status does not make one "honourable".

2) Ari should not be teaching anyone grappling with the limited knowledge he has. Poor them.

3) Keith Owen should have told Ari to find an environment where he could train DAILY with people equal or better than him. Doing what he did will only slow Ari's progress, which Keith, as a teacher, should be most interested in.
 
I'm of two minds on Owen's letter.

1. To the extent that people have fabricated thing to make Ari look worse, shame on them and good for Owens to back him up.

2. Not all of the criticism has come from keyboard warriors and not all of it has been pointless drivel. I don't think it's right to lump all of the Ari criticism into the "keyboard warrior" category. It's too simplistic, dismissive and incorrect.

Otherwise, it's a good letter and clears some stuff up.
 
I just wanna know where and when Ari is competing.

Also, anyone know what weight Ari is? He looks about 170-175 to me?
 
It's funny how suddenly I am a "keyboard warrior" for attacking Ari.

According to the statement, Ari has 6+ years of general grappling experience. That's about the same for myself. However, in that time, Ari has competed in ZERO grappling tournaments. Zero. 0. 0.00000.

In that time, I have competed in about 10-15. I've also met up with people from this board to train. Basically, if you want to roll with me, I will roll with you.

Of course, somehow I'm the keyboard warrior with my 10-15 tournaments, and Ari is the guy in the arena with his big fat zero competition record.

That makes a lot of sense, Keith. Great job defending your legitimacy.
 
I'm done with this....let him compete and earn his belt. The "BJJ Police" did their job...they put a suspect under the spot light and forced him to become publicly legitimate. He's working on that now so let him, move on to the next guy and just check back on him from time to time :)
 
Besides that, he picks out one comment that is not even that damning, and thus claims that all comments made about Ari are false. WTF?

Ari has lied over and over again, but Keith says Ari is one of the most honest people he has ever met. WTF?

Keith is one bad judge of character.
 
I'm done with this....let him compete and earn his belt. The "BJJ Police" did their job...they put a suspect under the spot light and forced him to become publicly legitimate. He's working on that now so let him, move on to the next guy and just check back on him from time to time :)

let him compete first, then I will let it go. I'll lay 2-1 odds for anybody that believes ari will actually compete within the next year.
 
I'm done with this....let him compete and earn his belt. The "BJJ Police" did their job...they put a suspect under the spot light and forced him to become publicly legitimate. He's working on that now so let him, move on to the next guy and just check back on him from time to time :)

Ari and Keith are definitely moving in the right direction here. However, the truth is that at this point it's still just talk with no specifics.

Again, somehow we are keyboard warriors, but yet all Ari has done with respect to competition is post on the internet. In fact, he has not posted anything more specific than the fact that he intends to compete at some unknown future time.

This is the first step, but according to the accounts of those who live near Ari, he has been ducking any real competitive challenges for the past 6 years. The rest of us have been putting it on the line in the real world during that time. Ari is behind the game, and at this point his actual competitive performance is long overdue.

I really hope Ari does follow through with his competition promise. But at this point, there are still no definite details about anything. Ari needs to do more than post on the internet about his vague intentions to really change my mind. He needs to actually get in there. Once he does so, I will start looking at things differently.
 
Can everyone stop posting all these fucking Ari/10th Planet threads! Everyone already knows he's a fraud. Let these threads DIE please!
 
Ari and Keith are definitely moving in the right direction here. However, the truth is that at this point it's still just talk with no specifics.

Again, somehow we are keyboard warriors, but yet all Ari has done with respect to competition is post on the internet. In fact, he has not posted anything more specific than the fact that he intends to compete at some unknown future time.

This is the first step, but according to the accounts of those who live near Ari, he has been ducking any real competitive challenges for the past 6 years. The rest of us have been putting it on the line in the real world during that time. Ari is behind the game, and at this point his actual competitive performance is long overdue.

I really hope Ari does follow through with his competition promise. But at this point, there are still no definite details about anything. Ari needs to do more than post on the internet about his vague intentions to really change my mind. He needs to actually get in there. Once he does so, I will start looking at things differently.

Balto quit being lazy and check ur PM box
 
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