10th Planet Watch – 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu Van Nuys Blog

I pulled this off the UG, (mixedmartialarts.com) Link to thread

From: EddieBravo
Posted: 1 hour ago
Edited: 06/24/09 5:02 PM
10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu, www.thetwister.tv Member Since: 5/9/02
Posts: 4723 Ignore | Quote | Vote Down | Vote Up

I did not give Brandon his brown belt.

I have known Brandon for many years, met him at JJ’s a long time ago while he was a student of black belt David Dunn. He also trained from time to time at 10th planet over the years. Many of my students are also full time students elsewhere, so his sporadic training at my school was quite normal.

When he approached me for affiliation he told me he was a brown belt and since I knew him for many years I never verified his brown belt, I just believed him.

Since the ability to teach my system is more important to me than the color of your belt i just checked him on his 10thplanet knowledge, which was pretty damn good.

I am not looking for champions to run my affiliates, just good teachers that understand my strategies, philosophies and have complete command of the 10th Planet terminology, which Brandon had down solid, and so does Ari, who got his purple from me directly.

Now that Brandon’s brown belt is in question, I called him yesterday and asked him exactly where he got it.

Now i know why he’s hesitant to explain how he got it publicly.

Turns out, according to Brandon, he got his brown belt from a bjj black belt while he was in the army. A guy named Sergeant Jason Keen who years later turned out to be a fake black belt.

Srgt Keen claimed he got his black belt from a Gracie military system called G.R.A.P.P.L.E. or something like that, but it turned out he lied, so basically Brandon’s brown belt is not legit.

Now the question is, what am I gonna do about this situation?

There are a few routes I can take, but I will discuss this with my top disciples before I make my final decision.

I take full responsibility for not verifying the legitimacy of his brown belt before official affiliation was complete, I will do my best to make sure this does not happen again