Fake BBs - does it really matter?

what what what
 
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So the Purple belt trains at another gym across the street. He should of just let the fat BB stay and his gym would get more business. Lol
 
When you guys say fake BB, do you mean a guy who has no exp. at all and is claiming to be all knowing? Or are you guys referring to say a competitive purple - brown who decided to con people one day by putting the black on.

If it was the later, I'd feel bad for falling for it, but if I am able to compete and do well at tournaments then I wouldn't be too mad about it in the end.

Of course if its the earlier, it'd be pretty easy to smoke those ones out (rolling or gym's record at tournaments)
 
I usually look down on people who got their judo black belts from McDojo type places, I'm sure I'd do the same for BJJ.

There isn't enough BJJ black belts round here to be able to fake it though.

That would always seem to be an issue. There arent that many black belts anywhere, so it would be pretty clear if one is faking it, cause he and his school would get tooled all the time.
 
I can't believe someone would actually seriously ask this question.

Of course it matters! A BJJ Black Belt is someone who dedicated years or even decades to the art of BJJ, and have sacrificed much to reach their rank. They honor their instructors by being upstanding people (although a lot of folks are still working on that!) and by carrying on the long tradition and high bar set in the art.

For someone to go on ebay, buy a belt and then start taking money to pass these physical and personal skills to people who think they are learning from a legit source is just awful and I'm ashamed for anyone who just goes "Meh, who cares about fake BJJ black belts".

I guess what I'm getting at is that people should care more about outcomes than cult hierarchy. The main place I train brings people in from other schools to spar all the time. The main place I take BJJ at goes to tournaments. In either case, the proof is in the pudding. The guys who go to BJJ comps do well and the school with the MMA sparring wouldn't bring in outsiders if they thought it would expose fake training or something. The black belt where I train I know is legit because I met his teacher, but it didn't matter. I could tell I was getting good stuff from him.

If a fraud is selling good material, the fake bb is just marketing. There are two main kinds of students - results oriented and hierarchy oriented. Results oriented people do just fine in arts with no belts at all as long as they are getting better. Hierarchy oriented people don't care as much about results as they do having people get out of thier way.

Without belts, it takes about 10 seconds to figure out who the top dogs that can show you the way are in a no gi school and those people get respected for thier work. To me, the only value of a belt is so that socially you don't always have to lead to be honored like a leader.

I don't see a difference between a purple posing as a black and a black posing as a striking instructor, explaining how to block haymakers and close the gap cause he hasn't boxed 10 rounds in his life. That is the same thing to me.

You can't tell some black belts to put on gloves and show you because they can't do it, but they sure as fuck talk like they can and get everyone to believe they have iron jaws and can slip punches on entries, but never have to show it because UFC.

A part of martial arts culture is puffing yourself up, unfortunately. If a purple fakes being a black belt but he can get me to win a blue belt tournament, I'll be happy. If he tells me how to close the gap but neither he nor any of his students will spar, I'm not going to be confident or interested in his striking advice, legit black belt or not.
 
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I have a hard time believing that a legitimate UFC Gym doesn't have the resources to check the validity of a BJJ black belt before letting him coach in their gym. There has be be a 12 year old with an iPad and an internet connection around who could help them out.
 
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I guess what I'm getting at is that people should care more about outcomes than cult hierarchy. The main place I train brings people in from other schools to spar all the time. The main place I take BJJ at goes to tournaments. In either case, the proof is in the pudding. The guys who go to BJJ comps do well and the school with the MMA sparring wouldn't bring in outsiders if they thought it would expose fake training or something. The black belt where I train I know is legit because I met his teacher, but it didn't matter. I could tell I was getting good stuff from him.

If a fraud is selling good material, the fake bb is just marketing. There are two main kinds of students - results oriented and hierarchy oriented. Results oriented people do just fine in arts with no belts at all as long as they are getting better. Hierarchy oriented people don't care as much about results as they do having people get out of thier way.

Without belts, it takes about 10 seconds to figure out who the top dogs that can show you the way are in a no gi school and those people get respected for thier work. To me, the only value of a belt is so that socially you don't always have to lead to be honored like a leader.

I don't see a difference between a purple posing as a black and a black posing as a striking instructor, explaining how to block haymakers and close the gap cause he hasn't boxed 10 rounds in his life. That is the same thing to me.

You can't tell some black belts to put on gloves and show you because they can't do it, but they sure as fuck talk like they can and get everyone to believe they have iron jaws and can slip punches on entries, but never have to show it because UFC.

A part of martial arts culture is puffing yourself up, unfortunately. If a purple fakes being a black belt but he can get me to win a blue belt tournament, I'll be happy. If he tells me how to close the gap but neither he nor any of his students will spar, I'm not going to be confident or interested in his striking advice, legit black belt or not.

This was a solid and well written post. The latter part is especially pertinent. The BJJ community is filled to the brim with self-proclaimed self-defense experts. That is typically a 'fraudulent' claim.
 
Skimming over the Choque book; Carlos/Helios claims to have learned from Maeda are put into question along with their competition record. However, good things did develop out of it over time.

Claiming a blackbelt and faking your lineage have been there from the very start of BJJ.

You nor anyone I've ever heard has any credible evidence of this being true. Only anecdotes.

Assuming it is true, because something was done in the past does not mean we should do it now. Appeal to tradition. You understand that bloodletting was once used in medicine to cure disease? Should we start doing that again too?
 
If a purple fakes being a black belt but he can get me to win a blue belt tournament, I'll be happy..

You will pay a liar?

You realise that the lie does not stop there.

He will lie about everything else in his life.

He is a pretender and feeds of guillible people like you.

If he was that good of an instructor, he will still run his club as a purple belt without having to lie.
 
You nor anyone I've ever heard has any credible evidence of this being true. Only anecdotes.

Assuming it is true, because something was done in the past does not mean we should do it now. Appeal to tradition. You understand that bloodletting was once used in medicine to cure disease? Should we start doing that again too?

He is just trolling as usual.

who is their right mind would be cool with paying a fake BJJ BB?
 
I guess what I'm getting at is that people should care more about outcomes than cult hierarchy. The main place I train brings people in from other schools to spar all the time. The main place I take BJJ at goes to tournaments. In either case, the proof is in the pudding. The guys who go to BJJ comps do well and the school with the MMA sparring wouldn't bring in outsiders if they thought it would expose fake training or something. The black belt where I train I know is legit because I met his teacher, but it didn't matter. I could tell I was getting good stuff from him.

If a fraud is selling good material, the fake bb is just marketing. There are two main kinds of students - results oriented and hierarchy oriented. Results oriented people do just fine in arts with no belts at all as long as they are getting better. Hierarchy oriented people don't care as much about results as they do having people get out of thier way.

Without belts, it takes about 10 seconds to figure out who the top dogs that can show you the way are in a no gi school and those people get respected for thier work. To me, the only value of a belt is so that socially you don't always have to lead to be honored like a leader.

I don't see a difference between a purple posing as a black and a black posing as a striking instructor, explaining how to block haymakers and close the gap cause he hasn't boxed 10 rounds in his life. That is the same thing to me.

You can't tell some black belts to put on gloves and show you because they can't do it, but they sure as fuck talk like they can and get everyone to believe they have iron jaws and can slip punches on entries, but never have to show it because UFC.

A part of martial arts culture is puffing yourself up, unfortunately. If a purple fakes being a black belt but he can get me to win a blue belt tournament, I'll be happy. If he tells me how to close the gap but neither he nor any of his students will spar, I'm not going to be confident or interested in his striking advice, legit black belt or not.
What what point do you honestly know you are getting "good stuff"? I said before and I'll say it again, you don't know what you don't know yet bud. You still are learning positions and subs and what to do from where that you don't realize the details you are missing that a purple may or may not provide you vs. a seasoned black belt who's been a black belt longer than that purple has been training.
 
You will pay a liar?

You realise that the lie does not stop there.

He will lie about everything else in his life.

He is a pretender and feeds of guillible people like you.

If he was that good of an instructor, he will still run his club as a purple belt without having to lie.

Ok, well, I won't be happy about it from that angle.

But if I already had a relationship with him and and was already doing well, I wouldn't break it over a lie like that. If I was getting results, it wouldn't be a deal breaker. I don't know if I would start with someone who is currently lying.

Lots of BJJ people are wrong about what they know. They think they know self defense, but they don't know context. They think they know how to "close the gap" but they don't have the reflexes to slip a punch and they don't have the technique to parry while moving forward. They might not even be able to get a take down without gi grips on someone who isn't trying to throw them back. They won't tell you that though. They ride on the coattails of mma fighters who happen to do BJJ and imply that distance management in a fist fight is automatically obtained grappling.

That runs somewhere between willful ignorance and fraud in my opinion, but I'm not going to refuse to learn arm bars from someone with that problem.
 
I guess what I'm getting at is that people should care more about outcomes than cult hierarchy. The main place I train brings people in from other schools to spar all the time. The main place I take BJJ at goes to tournaments. In either case, the proof is in the pudding. The guys who go to BJJ comps do well and the school with the MMA sparring wouldn't bring in outsiders if they thought it would expose fake training or something. The black belt where I train I know is legit because I met his teacher, but it didn't matter. I could tell I was getting good stuff from him.

If a fraud is selling good material, the fake bb is just marketing. There are two main kinds of students - results oriented and hierarchy oriented. Results oriented people do just fine in arts with no belts at all as long as they are getting better. Hierarchy oriented people don't care as much about results as they do having people get out of thier way.

Without belts, it takes about 10 seconds to figure out who the top dogs that can show you the way are in a no gi school and those people get respected for thier work. To me, the only value of a belt is so that socially you don't always have to lead to be honored like a leader.

I don't see a difference between a purple posing as a black and a black posing as a striking instructor, explaining how to block haymakers and close the gap cause he hasn't boxed 10 rounds in his life. That is the same thing to me.

You can't tell some black belts to put on gloves and show you because they can't do it, but they sure as fuck talk like they can and get everyone to believe they have iron jaws and can slip punches on entries, but never have to show it because UFC.

A part of martial arts culture is puffing yourself up, unfortunately. If a purple fakes being a black belt but he can get me to win a blue belt tournament, I'll be happy. If he tells me how to close the gap but neither he nor any of his students will spar, I'm not going to be confident or interested in his striking advice, legit black belt or not.

The problem is not technique. Although it is quite common that people who fake belts or rank generally have terrible technique. The problem is that the person claiming to have a rank in which he does not is being deceptive with an outright lie. We are not talking about putting lipstick on a pig here, we are talking about making up your rank as well as your lineage. This is fraud.

To be quite honest, this is one of the dumbest posts I've seen in quite a while. Your second paragraph is just a plain black or white fallacy. A false dilemma. You're saying that people are either results oriented or hierarchy oriented? That's complete nonsense.

If you think it's acceptable to be trained by a fraud, by all means do what you want to do. But you are not going to win any battles trying to convince people of that.
 
Ok, well, I won't be happy about it from that angle.

But if I already had a relationship with him and and was already doing well, I wouldn't break it over a lie like that. If I was getting results, it wouldn't be a deal breaker. I don't know if I would start with someone who is currently lying.

Lots of BJJ people are wrong about what they know. They think they know self defense, but they don't know context. They think they know how to "close the gap" but they don't have the reflexes to slip a punch and they don't have the technique to parry while moving forward. They might not even be able to get a take down without gi grips on someone who isn't trying to throw them back. They won't tell you that though. They ride on the coattails of mma fighters who happen to do BJJ and imply that distance management in a fist fight is automatically obtained grappling.

That runs somewhere between willful ignorance and fraud in my opinion, but I'm not going to refuse to learn arm bars from someone with that problem.

I'm pretty sure James Paredes students thought they were doing pretty well. I believe some of them began teaching seminars at one point.
 
What what point do you honestly know you are getting "good stuff"? I said before and I'll say it again, you don't know what you don't know yet bud. You still are learning positions and subs and what to do from where that you don't realize the details you are missing that a purple may or may not provide you vs. a seasoned black belt who's been a black belt longer than that purple has been training.

I am well aware that there is more to the martial arts than dreamed of in my philosophy. I consider myself a student in the spirit of JKD and only accept knowledge in terms of its application to MMA sparring and the intellectual integrity of those techniques in terms of self defense. I know enough martial arts to know what I'm looking at when it comes to grappling. All of my opinions on martial arts stem from my experience sparring with people and I don't represent myself as a BJJ expert.

I don't care if someone thinks that invalidates my opinions on grappling. Maybe I'm just typing because I enjoy hearing myself talk.
 
Ok, well, I won't be happy about it from that angle.

But if I already had a relationship with him and and was already doing well, I wouldn't break it over a lie like that. If I was getting results, it wouldn't be a deal breaker. I don't know if I would start with someone who is currently lying.
.

But that is what they hope for.

They lie and deceive people.

Then when they get called out on the lies, the "loyal" students will stay and the "traitors" leaves them.

Now the question is how much more lies do they get caught saying and cheating people that have earn that cash by spending hours working while that pretender is just lying and take their money.
 
The problem is not technique. Although it is quite common that people who fake belts or rank generally have terrible technique. The problem is that the person claiming to have a rank in which he does not is being deceptive with an outright lie. We are not talking about putting lipstick on a pig here, we are talking about making up your rank as well as your lineage. This is fraud.

To be quite honest, this is one of the dumbest posts I've seen in quite a while. Your second paragraph is just a plain black or white fallacy. A false dilemma. You're saying that people are either results oriented or hierarchy oriented? That's complete nonsense.

If you think it's acceptable to be trained by a fraud, by all means do what you want to do. But you are not going to win any battles trying to convince people of that.

You are attributing a lot of emotional content to my post that isn't there. I'm not in favor of frauds. I personally train with people because I enjoy MMA sparring and I can't accept the danger to my person that comes from training anything that isn't applicable.

I'm sure there are some people who are both, but if you are results oriented, your position in the hierarchy is automatically obtained. You can have no belt and be respected because you roll well and know what you are talking about in no gi. I imagine that if there were no belt colors in gi the same thing would be true there.

The problem of frauds, fake belt rankings, in my opinion comes from people caring about something that shouldn't be as big of a deal. If people weren't exalted for their belt color, people wouldn't fake them.
 
But that is what they hope for.

They lie and deceive people.

Then when they get called out on the lies, the "loyal" students will stay and the "traitors" leaves them.

Now the question is how much more lies do they get caught saying and cheating people that have earn that cash by spending hours working while that pretender is just lying and take their money.

I don't understand. Once the lie is exposed, isn't it exposed? I've never personally been in a fraud environment to my knowledge. Even if the "traitors leave," isn't the jig up?
 
I am well aware that there is more to the martial arts than dreamed of in my philosophy. I consider myself a student in the spirit of JKD and only accept knowledge in terms of its application to MMA sparring and the intellectual integrity of those techniques in terms of self defense. I know enough martial arts to know what I'm looking at when it comes to grappling. All of my opinions on martial arts stem from my experience sparring with people and I don't represent myself as a BJJ expert.

I don't care if someone thinks that invalidates my opinions on grappling. Maybe I'm just typing because I enjoy hearing myself talk.

I have a JKD background too.

JKD is supposed to separate the wheat from the chaff. The hardest part in practice is that it can be in fact very difficult to tell the wheat from the chaff yourself.

Some stuff I thought worthless turned out to actually be very valuable. And some stuff I thought was valuable actually turned out to be worthless.

JKD is good philosophically, but you have to be very careful how you apply it in practice. It's just hard to always tell what is good and what is bad. And sparring is not the easiest guide either. There are some things that will work great in sparring for a few years, and then be nearly worthless against better opponents from then on. There are other things that will fail for years in sparring, but eventually they are honed enough to become extremely effective.

13 years of JKD background got me to the point where I was a beginner in just about everything -- striking, grappling, weapons, etc. And that is a very useful skillset.

But to get past the point of just being a very well rounded beginner, I had to let go of the philosophy some.
 
I have a JKD background too.

JKD is supposed to separate the wheat from the chaff. The hardest part in practice is that it can be in fact very difficult to tell the wheat from the chaff yourself.

Some stuff I thought worthless turned out to actually be very valuable. And some stuff I thought was valuable actually turned out to be worthless.

JKD is good philosophically, but you have to be very careful how you apply it in practice. It's just hard to always tell what is good and what is bad. And sparring is not the easiest guide either. There are some things that will work great in sparring for a few years, and then be nearly worthless against better opponents from then on. There are other things that will fail for years in sparring, but eventually they are honed enough to become extremely effective.

13 years of JKD background got me to the point where I was a beginner in just about everything -- striking, grappling, weapons, etc. And that is a very useful skillset.

But to get past the point of just being a very well rounded beginner, I had to relax the philosophy some.

I'm with you. I'm old though. I'm in my 30's and I've been in martial arts sense I was a kid, and I got into the freestyle sparring a long time ago and have been in years of BJJ classes and have taken a lot of private lessons on top of it. I'm at the point now where I can see a technique on youtube once and apply it without drilling it on a competitive blue belt, because I am just an awesome visual learner and my basics are good. When I drill, I'll rep a technique more times in 10 minutes than many BJJ guys get all week.

My point is that I'm on the same page. I'm on this forum a lot because I'm highly motivated to improve my grappling. That doesn't mean I buy into the hierarchy though, and I certainly don't accept BJJ only, non sparring black belts teaching striking defense as less fraudulent than a purple belt pretending to be a black belt.
 
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