See BJJ because it competes goes the other way a bit. And has the concept of sandbagging.
Every student is going to represent the school they train at to a certain extent, even the white belts, but I get what you're saying, the black belts are going to get the most attention from observers. If somebody is visiting the dojo and watching a class and considering the possibility of joining they are going to be watching the black belts the most. Well they will probably also be watching the brown belts a good deal too. In many dojos brown comes right before black so the brown belts are supposed to be almost as good as the black belts and have almost as much knowledge and skill as the black belts, some of the brown belts might even have just as much knowledge and skill as the black belts but are still wearing brown belts because they haven't been promoted yet depending on what kind of system the dojo has for rank promotion. So the brown belts are going to get almost as much attention as the black belts.
Number one, just because you're not asking doesn't mean nobody else is.
What is his actual knowledge of groundfighting?
Jesse is an accomplished karate-ka. His brother is an MMA fighter. Not sure how accomplished, but I think he's a pro.
www.karatebyjesse.com
Which suggests that Jesse has a lot of experience in standup and his brother has a lot of experience on the ground. Doesn't necessarily mean Jesse has a lot of experience on the ground.
I agree with your post for the most part. Red/brown is usually the peak of fitness for most people and is a very exciting time leading up to black belt.
Well the knowledge and skill for black belt should be higher than brown belt but not much higher, after all you're not going to try to teach somebody calculus right after they've learned basic addition. For black belt to be much harder than brown belt, I see that as not being balanced and from what I've learned in the martial arts, much of it is about balance, both physical balance and balance in your whole life. For black belt to be much harder than brown belt, that would contradict the lesson in balance.
The problem is that you're basing this on the notion that "black belt is just another rank in Japan," without actually citing any first-hand experience or written policies on the matter.
So many variables here you are not considering.
My 1st and 5th dan tests were the toughest. The 1st because it lasted 2 days and I really wanted black belt. The 5th was difficult because I really wanted to earn Sensei's respect and justify his faith in me. Two completely different motivations (one centered on me, the other centered on my sensei) but both equally demanding in their own way.
I could probably prove boxing is better than kickboxing if they gave me a beginner in which to do it.
Do you happen to have any info of what happened in the tournament? It's entirely possible he crosstrained plenty and was above white belt, based on his history/brothers history, but there are also plenty of people that really aren't anywhere above white belt in BJJ and use stand-up grappling + striking to cover that up.
He dodged around the guy for most of the round, got warned and threatened with a D.Q. So then he just walked in to Mount and subbed him in the final minutes with an Ezekiel
I think there's a lot of "should" in this post. There's a lot of room for different approaches, IMO. I'll also point out there's a lot of subjectivity in "higher...but not much higher". There's a pretty big difference between brown and black in the system I came up in. In that system, the differences between rank are progressive, so the big gap between brown and black is in line with the ever-growing gaps between successive ranks - it's more than the gap between purple and brown, but (arguably) less than the gap between shodan and nidan.
It's what I would read about in martial arts magazines, back when I would get Inside Karate magazine which stopped being published in 1999, many of their articles talked about training in the USA vs training in Japan.
You do have a point although I wouldn't see first degree black belt as being equivalent to an executive or a Brigadier General, what I see as an equivalent to those things would be ranks such as fifth or sixth degree. And yes, going up the dan ranks does get harder, and takes longer, the higher you go up.
I don't see such a problem with it in the higher dan ranks but getting promoted from 1st Kyu to 1st Dan shouldn't be much harder, or take much longer, than being promoted from 2nd Kyu to 1st Kyu, if it does then it would make sense to have ranks in between 1st Kyu and 1st Dan.
I believe that Gup is what they call the ranks below black belt in Taekwondo, in Japanese Karate they call such ranks Kyu and with the Kyu ranks they go backwards in number, the lower the number the higher the Kyu rank so 1st Kyu is the highest Kyu rank and is the rank right before 1st degree black belt which is also called 1st Dan and the Dan ranks go forward in number, the higher the number the higher the Dan rank.
Of course there's variance but Im talking about how hard and how long it would take an individual to get from 1st Kyu to 1st Dan in proportion to how hard it was and how long it took that same individual to get from 2nd Kyu to 1st Kyu, to compare that individual to somebody else would be apples and oranges in what Im talking about.
Again, Im not talking about comparing different people, see above.
Not necessarily, when I was 45 I was stronger than when I was 18, and now Im stronger still.
So have you gone to 4th Dan and beyond?
Im just stating my take on it.
I like to hear different points of view.
Well to me it just doesn't seem proper to have too big of a gap between 1st Kyu brown and 1st Dan black, if there is a big gap it would make sense to have ranks in between 1st Kyu brown and 1st Dan black, wouldn't it?
