Does anyone know about Claudio Franca's BJJ school? I'll be going to college in Santa Cruz next year (so I need information on his Santa Cruz location, obviously), and this is the only school I found. Any help would be greatly appreciated. If this is the wrong thread, please move it.
Claudio Franca's school has a good reputation. Another excellent school - closer to the west side of town - is Sandro "Batata" Santiago's new school: http://batatabjj.com/
The San Jose Dojo is nice also, OTM (on the mat) just opened a new school in downtown, you may want to check that out also. OTM has been in the game for along time and were with the gracies in there garage back in the day.
dude i train at UCSC if your going to school up there. Francas alumni garth taylor and paul whos last name i can't think of lead class. Both are very legit black belts, garth having some huge wins its only 150 for two and a half months. Ryan hall even came up last week.
I have zero to no respect for Claudio Franca. One of my teamates was going against one of his students at a tourney of his. Make a long story short he told the ref to and time keeper to let the match keep going. My teamate was winning and eventually got tapped log after the match wa supposed to be over. Also he is know to give all of his students first rounds byes at all of the tourneys he runs.
I've heard a couple of stories of Claudio favoring his guys at tournaments. Having said that - he runs the US Open better than almost any other tournament out there. I have competed at his in house tournaments in Santa Cruz and he and his students are real good guys. I dropped into his San Jose location last year and all the guys there were real cool. Carlos Mello, a brown belt, was leading the class - I think he is the main instructor there. Either way, dude you're lucky to be in Santa Cruz - there is a ton of good Jiu Jitsu there.
Interesting to hear all this stuff about tournament favouratism - also, how did the OP get banned if that is his 1 post? >.>
Posts moved to the Wasteland or that are deleted aren't included in your post count. He probably posted porn in the heavyweights or something.
Carlos Melo now has his Black. He earned last year. He also won the Pan Am, Mundial and US Open comps as a brown. The Mundial tournament should be very exciting this year. We have a few guys that I believe will do very well. Carlos is now teaching at Gilroy BJJ and Claudio Franca's school. Gilroy BJJ is an affiliate school of Claudio Franca. It used to be called Bola Academy.
