I saw on Reylson Gracie’s Instagram he awarded a student his Black belt in Gracie Jiu Jitsu which is different than Brazilian Jiu Jitsu which the student is a blue belt in. I am assuming he’s a Black belt in the self defense aspect of GJJ but a Blue belt on the ground and in rolling. Very strange imo. Carlson Sr said Reylson was a mental case, maybe he was right.
He’s been a topic here several times over the years. I’ve never met him, but in 25 years, I have never heard a positive word about him. He is something of an embarrassment from what I gather.
Despite being super legit, he gave up on being a legit TEACHER of jiu jitsu many years ago. He just sells belts pretty much. On his old website. when he taught in vegas, it used to say you could get a Black Belt with 2 years of privates. The privates were often taught by Blue Belts. No rolling. Lots of funny stories about how bullsh!t his school was. It sounded like almost a BJJ ponzi scheme the way upper belts taught lower belts privates.
No one in Vegas took his school seriously.
Pretty sad really for a guy with that background to be such a hack.
Oh yeah. I really like Rodrigo’s jiu jitsu too. His dad made a choice about how to make a living. It has nothing to do with any lack of knowledge.
But, before I even started BJJ proper (this was like 26 years ago) – I was training grappling with an early UFC fighter and I remember hearing all the scuttlebutt surrounding Reylson giving BBs to certain early American practitioners and whether that was actually"legit" or not. This was a topic on here in the earliest days of this forum.
yes I remember. were talking about initials KG who was second American to get his Black Belt after Kukuk which Kukuk had been working on since the early 80’s.
Was he training with Rorion? prior to 1991 he was the only one teaching besides Carley. I thought he said he had trained for 4 years were Kukuk had trained 10 plus
Since the early 80’s in Bresler’s garage, Royce was his main instructor, when he couldn’t continue making the trip from OC, rickson told him about reylson, who was much closer
Ken & Rodrigo were main training partners, kind of came up together once Ken switched to Reylson.
Have an acquaintance/former training partner that trained with Reylson & Rodrigo(and Rodrigo’s brother Caesar to a lesser extent) from '93-'95. He has stated that Reylson is indeed extremely knowledgeable and a very good instructor. The problem came about in the mid '90’s when he became a gambling addict. At that time his business model became the one he’s now infamous for(basically stealing from people/selling belts). Prior to that, it was a solid gym, from his statements. He left at purple belt in '95 to go train with one of Sergio Penha’s BB’s while Rodrigo left for NYC with Renzo. Rodrigo’s brother Caesar stayed but isn’t supposed to be near Rodrigo’s level or his dad’s.
Its been years since i trained there but they did a “good” job of giving mixed messages to students. They had a habit of reinforcing that there students were learning " “gracie jiujitsu” which had the benefit of making lots of students scared to leave because you wouldnt be learning gracie jiujitsu outside of their school and the fear of the unknown