Judo Olympian in BlueBelt division

From the Judoinfo.com forum:

CREONTE Dec 1 2006, 09:47 PM Post #1

Group: Members
Posts: 11
Joined: 1-December 06
Member No.: 4558

Winston Gordon (Great Britain) won the COPA BITTETI BRAZILIAN JIU JITSU CHAMPIONSHIP in
London a couple of weeks ago.It was his first BJJ Competition and he fought in the Blue Belt division.
He won his weight class and the absolute with an awesome display of Judo.
After many throws that would have been scored ippon in a Judo competition he went onto win the absolute
weight division by submission (Strangle).

It's good he didn't sandbag... LOL at "strangle".

not out of the ordinary.

hector lombard, who fights in pride now (2 losses so far), competed at the olympics, and was on the cuban national team for many years, competed in 2 bjj competitions in australia at the blue belt level.

he naturally won them

It all has to do with time spent training. I used to routinely handle judo blackbelts with a blue belt in bjj simply because they didn't have as much time logged in ground training.

That's why tournaments should be based on more than belts. Sandbagging is made easy by the belt system.

Thats just so wrong, if you are a Judo BB you should be competing in the advanced division at a BJJ tournament.

I am a blue belt in BJJ and have been training for 3.5yrs. I recently competed in a tournament where one of the guys in my division who was wearing a white belt was throwing guys like rag dolls and making it look easy. I thought "this guy must have Judo training". After the division was over i approached him and asked him what his training backround was. He said he has been training judo since he was knee high and has been doing BJJ for a few months.

Needless to say my team mates all thought that this person should have competed in the advanced div. I later found out that this guy was a judo BB from a person who had trained with him before.

I had the misfortune of fighting a commonwealth judo type in the blue belt division of a tournament. (I didn't win, as you might imagine)

Somebody told me once that a judo black belt is supposed to fight in bjj as a purple...
Any truth to that?

judo guys know what a judo bb is worth,a bjj blue belt.dont blame me this is not the first guy

This totally defies forum logic.

I thought judo black belts were worthless and a bjj blue belt would be enough to make a judo bb one's beotch in the mat. Surely there is no problem with someone with worthless ground skills like all judo people have entering the blue belt division at a tournament.

Now you're just making shit up... Judo black belt beating bjj blue belts..in BJJ nonetheless.. Troll.

Judo Olympian black belts are slightly different than regular judo black belts. Their rank is "fresh purple" in BJJ.

It actually depends on the school and training.  Some judo schools are basically mcdojos.  Some are hard core with competition training.  Some do Ne-Waza as much as stand-up. 

What I personally don't understand is when a person gets satisfaction from finding the easiest division he can get into and winning rather than getting into the hardest division they will allow him to compete in and doing his best.  But then again for some people a trophy or medal is more important than personal integrity.

Who cares?
So what? He won a blue belt jiu-jitsu tournament.

He is not a Jiu-Jitsu black belt. Therefore, he did not compete in the black belt division. I am not saying he couldn't win or even do well, but he obviously thought he couldn't.

If I were him, I would want to win at the highest level. He chose to win a division that means less than the others. That's his own fault.

I don't see a problem with sandbagging. It only really hurts the sandbagger, because he never reaches his full potential.

Surely it's just as problematic, competing up? Should I as a 4+ year white belt, just strap on a purple belt and compete in it? Enter the purple belt division wearing a white belt?

Seems like it's up to people's instructors to promote them to a suitable level, but then we get into the "giving away belts" problem. I don't really see a solution....

Good point, Chalupa!

This is an interesting thread. We just had a tournament at my bjj school in Clearwater, Florida. I also train in judo and my judo instructor brought several of his students. I went to his school and talked to the adult class about the tournament. He runs a very competative judo school. For example, one of his students judo took 1st place in the Pan American Judo Championships and won all her matches by Ippon.

Anyway- long story short. I recommended most of the black belt students to compete in the purple belt division as this schools ground training wasn't bad but at the same time I didn't want the judo people to be totally embarrassed by getting killed competing in the brown and black divisions.

As it turned out, one of the black belts placed 3rd in the heavy weith purple belt division and one of his blue belts placed 3rd in the lightweight white belt division. Over all I think the judo people competed at the level that made sense.

The above thread judokas are clearly sandbagging!

Hey at our academy there is an automatic rule, that if you are a Judo Blck belt you recieve a BJJ Blue belt right away.

I know several other academies that have the same rule.

That might explain it. Perhaps he is respecting his BJJ rank (if it was given to him by a BJJ instructor) and will move up once he is promoted.

Same thing happens with Wrestlers, you have a guy wrestling for 15 years and doing bjj for 6 months entering the novice div. Nothing new here.

white belt bjj = jiudo black belt so it makes sense to me. Lombard? lmao The next vitor huh?

This was posted on the same thread on the Judo forum.


Rhadi Ferguson

post Today, 02:06 AM
Post #56

I've rolled with Winston personally and HE IS ABOVE BLUE BELT LEVEL. WAYYYYY ABOVE BLUE BELT LEVEL.

I would easily put him at a high purple. I rolled with him in 2002 in Italy and I saw him rolling with Flavio Canto as well. When you put that with his WORLD CLASS judo experience - the title of this thread is not very impressive and a bit unbalanced.

Winston should compete in either the brown or black belt division.

However, I must say congratulations because he is cross training and stepping out there into the world of BJJ which is good, but let's not do what the BJJers did when they first entered our sport.

They held black belts, walked into tournaments with white belts and then talked about how they beat everyone who was beneath their level technically.

Let's put everything in perspective.

"By this guy's own admission, Olympic Level Judo = blue belt level in BJJ?"

Uh no. Actually it means that the instructor who gave him his BJJ belt thinks that his level is blue belt.

And yes, the BJJ belt system has so many holes in it, but what can you expect when there is no common agreed criteria on how belts are promoted and the competition divisions are based on those belt levels.

I don't think he did anything wrong. If the divisions are based on BJJ
rank, then it is up to his instructor to promote him, so that he can
compete in BJJ at the higher ranks, IMO. That being said, I would be
pissed to draw him in the first round and later find out he was a Judo
Olympian.