When Blue Belts are Basically Black Belts - Ruotolo Bros

The belt age limits in BJJ are pure silliness. There are plenty of world champions in other sports (including Judo) who are under 18 years old.

I know why they do it. They don't want BJJ turning into TKD or Karate with little kids being given blackbelts. But there needs to be a mechanism to recognize when children are actually at the level of an adult. I think that if a child competes in the adult division of a major tournament and wins they should be eligible for promotion to the next belt up, as a minimum - i.e. if you have some freak 13 year old kid win an adult whitebelt division he should be eligible for blue, and so on.
 
Chandler sama said:
Blue is the highest you can acheive as a child. I understand the thinking that is behind this when they made it, but IMO it's outdated and doesn't seem to be working well. On the one hand they don't want a bunch of kid blackbelts that can't really fight, but now there are kids that at 15 or 16 are as good or better than world champions. In some cases it could be the kids are young and have strength, speed, flexibility, etc on their side, but often times their actual knowledge of Bjj is as good or better than most blackbelts.

With people starting earlier and better instruction, someone with 10 years of experience can be really good. They might not have a black belt, but IMO they are masters of BJJ. IMHO the belt system needs to be revised.
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No, the top kids are probably lest than 1 percent of all kids doing bjj. When I mean top, like you said blue belts that can compete with top black belts.

We don't change the belt system for these small percent prodigies.
 
Ruotolo twins are good, they're also on some special Atos diet special juice. LoL!

But as good as the Ruotolo twins are, Nicky Ryan is always going to be their daddy.
 
Miyaos will have some crazy walking problems in a couple of years
 
Nothing is worse then going up against these teen blue/purples in major tournament settings. These kids with 10+ years on the mat before hitting their prime are just on a completely different level.
 
Stop doing marketing for people that should be opponents.
 
We had one kid that Relson promoted to purple when he turned 16. This was about a decade ago.

He started Japanese jiu-jitsu when he was five or six, and folk style wrestling a year or two later. Then when he was 9 his dad found out about Brazilian jiu jitsu and put them in that. There were not many kids training back then there were only ever a couple at the gym, so he trained with adults a lot. He kept doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu and folk style wrestling a little bit. He competed in BJJ constantly. My coach was teaching BJJ at a karate gym sometimes too and he took him with him once, and he arm barred one of the black belt karate instructors twice-- this was when he was 12. I knew the guy and he was not bad.

Anyway he finally goes on to high school and he joins the wrestling team. He had been doing folk style wrestling in a club but this is Texas and wrestling just isn't that big here. But his high school happens to have a pretty good wrestling program, and his dad actually got him private coaching with Kamal, and he just really takes to wrestling and starts dominating immediately. So freshman year he's a runner-up in state in his weight class, and only had something like two losses all season. But he just really falls in love with wrestling-- keeps doing BJJ during off-season but really focuses on his wrestling, and he ends up winning state I think two of the next three years, and only dropping a couple of losses the rest of his high school career. He ends up getting a full ride to a MAJOR Big 10 School, but he kept getting injured during college, and he finally left his shoes on the mat. Basically he went back to BJJ after college and he still trains and teaches wrestling and stuff but isn't a major competitor or anything, but dude is a total beast for sure. Ended up getting his BB at age 22 or 23.

But honestly the overall grappling that he had at age 16 or 17-- your wise he easily could have been black belt under a lot of people.

Bear in mind, Relson is slow as HELL to promote past blue belt.


Chandler sama said:
Blue is the highest you can acheive as a child. I understand the thinking that is behind this when they made it, but IMO it's outdated and doesn't seem to be working well. On the one hand they don't want a bunch of kid blackbelts that can't really fight, but now there are kids that at 15 or 16 are as good or better than world champions. In some cases it could be the kids are young and have strength, speed, flexibility, etc on their side, but often times their actual knowledge of Bjj is as good or better than most blackbelts.

With people starting earlier and better instruction, someone with 10 years of experience can be really good. They might not have a black belt, but IMO they are masters of BJJ. IMHO the belt system needs to be revised.
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liuk3 said:
I believe that green is supposed to be the highest you can achieve in BJJ as a child. You are supposed to be eligible to receive a blue belt when you are 16 years old.
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BJJ_Rage said:
been saying this for a long time, its ridiculous that guys that have been grappling for over 10 years are "blue belts" these kids must comepete as blue belts beause of their age, yet some random dude whos been traing for 2 yeatrs have to go agasint this "kids" who have more mat time than 99% of hobbiest black belts, its ridiculous.
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Canned Tuna said:
I believe the current ibjjf rules have like a gray belt for kids and when they turn 16 their instructor can give them blue or purple at the instructor's discretion.

I could definitely be mistaken, though
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Well

The International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation (IBJJF) has been one of the most strict grappling organizations in their pledge to keep our sport/martial art’s standard high. One of the ways they have chosen to accomplish this was by putting in place strict guidelines and time constraints for coaches to promote their students, particularly younger athletes/practitioners.

With the rise of teenage phenomenons such as Mica Galvão and the Ruotolo Brothers, there has been plenty of talk regarding an upgrade to these time constraints being applied by the sport’s most important organization, which have currently stood as such:

https://www.bjjheroes.com/bjj-news/...ENlb_K6ba4DHUt5y4UtNNHAQE_ArJG5UHGRI04LaRFpo8
 
kenetics said:
No, the top kids are probably lest than 1 percent of all kids doing bjj. When I mean top, like you said blue belts that can compete with top black belts.

We don't change the belt system for these small percent prodigies.
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Just allowing them to compete up belt levels should be enough. If a blue belt can beat black belts in competition let him (the IBJJF could require ranking points to stop random kids signing up a level for shits and giggles). Or just remove the age requirement if you have enough ranking points.
 
GordoBarraBJJ said:
Well

The International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation (IBJJF) has been one of the most strict grappling organizations in their pledge to keep our sport/martial art’s standard high. One of the ways they have chosen to accomplish this was by putting in place strict guidelines and time constraints for coaches to promote their students, particularly younger athletes/practitioners.

With the rise of teenage phenomenons such as Mica Galvão and the Ruotolo Brothers, there has been plenty of talk regarding an upgrade to these time constraints being applied by the sport’s most important organization, which have currently stood as such:

https://www.bjjheroes.com/bjj-news/...ENlb_K6ba4DHUt5y4UtNNHAQE_ArJG5UHGRI04LaRFpo8
Click to expand...
Neat. Looks like they are making at least some attempt to address the young phenoms - good.
 
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