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If you liked it, if you didn’t like it, if you loved it, just let me know that you’re alive!

Well you already know by now the JT
is working towards becoming a Black Belt
BJJ World Champion and we are setting
up everything to help make that happen.

I’m a stat guy, I look at facts, I make
game plans, I make plans, I make blueprints
and I only deal with reality.

Here’s the reality of this goal.

An American winning the has only been done
twice, I look at who did it, how that did it
their situation and understand that it’s a
extremely difficult.

BJ Penn did it in the pena division in 2000
beating my friend Edson Diniz by points.

Lovato did it in 2007, he left his normal
weight class and moved up to the super
heavy division beating Big Mac by Ref Decision.

That’s it!  No one else has done it.

At the Black Belt level the number of
Americans that are even getting on the
stand to get medals at the CBJJ events
is rare, to my knowledge you have Bill
Cooper (silver Worlds),Lovato has won
several including Nationals, Mike Fowler
just recently won Bronze at the Rio Open
in Brazil and won the Absolute division
at the Asian Open, but besides that it’s
extremely rare.(if you know of any other
Americans that have placed at the Worlds
or CBJJ events at the black belt level
please let me know)

One of my goals is to become the first
American based team to have a black belt
World Champion, a few years ago it was to
be the first American based team to have
a black belt medal at the Worlds, that
almost happened when Mike Fowler caught
Daniel in an armlock at the Worlds in
Brazil a few years ago, only to get slammed
on his head and his opponent not get
DQ’d.

I always say strive for the highest level,
and why not, on my team we’ve had a Blue
Belt World Champion, 2 Purple belt World
Champions, 3 kids World Champions, a Purple
belt Silver, brown belt bronze and a brown
belt silver and that’s great, but in the
big picture, THEY DON’T COUNT!

If you do BJJ(with the gi) Black Belt is
the highest goal, the ultimate goal and
becoming a Black Belt World Champion puts
you at the very top of that goal.

So now we have JT reaching for that goal,
and I’ll say this right here, and right
now.  JT will become a Black Belt World
Champion one day.

Right now we are on a mission to test
JT’s skills against the best in his
division, at the tournament in RIO, he
wanted to see how his guard stacked up
against the best, he showed that he is
in the top tier of black belts already
and he hasn’t been a black belt for more
days.

In this match that you’re about to watch
JT is going to be fighting against
Augusto Mendes.  We have a ranking pool
for everyone in JT’s leve division and
we have Augusto Mendes being ranked
#2, behind Micheal Langhi who at this
moment is the king for the black belt
leve division.

At this past Worlds Augusto gave Langhi
his toughest match, only losing by
advantage.  So getting matched against
Augusto is exactly what we wanted, we
wanted to see exactly where JT stands.

JT loses this match but I personally
feel that JT could’ve gotten the
ref decision, although I teach my guys
that, if they let the match go to a ref
decision, it’s their fault and never expect
to get the call.

I want to see what you thought about the
match, here is what I saw, JT gets an
advantage for the near sweep that he was
working for hard the entire match, Augusto
gets an advantage for getting to
JT’s 1/2 guard.

I thought that JT should’ve gotten
an advantage for going for the armlock,he
was on the arm for a few seconds and I’ve
seen advantages given for weaker attempts
all of the time.

But JT’s my guy,I want you to let me know
what you thought about the match, so please
leave a comment at the end of the blog.

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