Do I now have to wait another 6 years to be promoted to BB? That would put me training for 16 years consistently. I know I won’t have to wait that long as my professor will get permission from his professor and Jean Jacques Machado to promote me before he has 2 stripes.

Of course not. It’s completely normal to promote your students with an “ok” from a 2nd degree black belt, if you’re not there yet, yourself.

There are of course different opinions on whether a 2:nd degree BB has to be involved as a senior co-promoter (also providing evidence) or if a 2:nd degree BB can "ok", "give blessing" etc. for a no (or one) degree black belt to promote someone to BB. Or perhaps for a BJJ blue belt (but with extensive background in judo and wrestling) to promote someone to BB in BJJ "with permission from" a 2:nd degree BB. Personally, I would dispute a BB promotion from a no degree BB (with "permission", "blessing" or similar from a 2:nd degree BB) just as I would dispute a BB promotion from a BJJ blue belt, no matter who gave their "ok". Either you were promoted by a 2:nd degree BB or higher or you were not.

If a coral belt gives his blessing to one of his students to promote someone to BB, you would disagree and argue it?

If a coral belt is blessing the promotion on behalf of a BB without the required credentials, they should just put their name on the promotion. I am not a huge stickler on this rule, but some are. But that is not the situation originally presented, which was that there was a BB with time served to be a 2nd degree and no higher ranked belt above him to promote him. This is about the only situation that I believe time served degrees make sense. Eventually many of us will find ourselves in a position that there is nobody above us to promote us and the time served solution fixes that.

You’re creating a hypothetical situation. No one said anything about a BJJ blue belt promoting anyone to black belt. We would all agree this situation would seriously be disputed. However, don’t feel that you have more experience, more pull, and more of a say so then say Jean Jacques Machado. If a coral belt gives his blessing to one of his students to promote someone to BB, you would disagree and argue it? How about Gordo? (Yes, this actually happened) I watched Gordo give his “blessing” to promote someone to BB to a 1 stripe student of his. Would you be able to tell Gordo, a man who has such a huge legacy in BJJ, that he is wrong?

When I was a blue belt, I watched my professor (one stripe) promote a BB and mentioned that he cleared it with his professor (Gordo). So I did wonder if that would technically make him a Gordo BB. I just find it crazy that some people would intentionally hold a person back from being promoted. There is never black and white. Every situation has a grey area. In my case, I had to swap gyms with 4 stripes on my purple. (Which I was for 6 years). My new coach at the time was a brown belt and has now been promoted to BB. He and I compliment each others game and we’ve trained the same amount of time. Johan, mentioned he would downvote me and anyone else who is promoted even with a coral belts blessing which blows my mind. But to each their own. I respect his opinion and understand why he or anyone else would but I still contest there are situations that warrant it. Such as, not making a brown belt wait 6 years for a BB based off an old “rule”.

Both JJ and Gordo are below Carlos Jr in lineage. Has he passed on a <2:nd degrees promoting to BB standard while also having been central in formalizing the >2:nd degree standard? If pulling ranks would settle the issue, JJ and Gordo are really not the best examples. And there could in any case be even more senior BB:s both for and against the 2:nd degree standard. Still, no one has a <2:nd degrees onlynpromoting new BB:s standard, so I would say it's a hard fact that those promoted by >2:nd degree BB:s will be accepted by those only requiring a no degree BB (with or without "blessing") as well, so even if some will still be ok with it, a senior BB actually promoting is required for a BB promotion to be universally recognised.

As a brown belt, I had to wait more than 6y for my BB and had turned down a black belt offer that didn't come from a legit 2:nd degree BB or higher. So what's the big problem here? Accept the degree and have some people dispute it or wait and have a universally recognised BB. Simple as that! I made my choice. If a coral belt know you enough to give a <2:nd degree BB "blessing" to promote you to BB, he should know you enough to act in the role of senior co-promoter as well.

So we agree now

thanks guys for the good discussion

But we don't all bow at the feet of IBJJF. There was never any community endorsement of the organization; the Gracies just decided to do it and have been profiting from it ever since. Your rank should be about your skills and abilities more than it should be about having paid your money for long enough, which seems to be the IBJJF criteria.

I'm not sure what the issue would be with a >/=2nd degree just signing off on a <2nd degree's student. I'm far from being a computer guy, but it seems like it wouldn't take much to institute an "endorsement" feature on belt promotions on this site, where a verified >/=2nd degree BB could endorse a promotion that wasn't done by "the right person". There are plenty of parallels we could draw in everyday life: pretty much every skilled trade out there has an apprentice-supervisor relationship where the apprentice is the one who does the work, but a supervisor inevitably checks up on and endorses the work. Why would this be so different in BJJ? Another personal example: my primary care physician is actually a team of people - basically, I have a doctor who is still in his/her residency (this person changes all the time) and all of their work with me is double checked by an overseeing, experienced doctor as well as a whole team of other doctors in their residency. This is a huge benefit to me as a patient, because now there are several doctors looking out for my health, which is way better than one. Wouldn't belt promotions benefit from a similar situation? One of the major problems we run into if we don't allow for any endorsements of belts is the fact that there are SO MANY "non-kosher" promotions out there, with 0/1-degree BB's promoting others to BB all willy-nilly, that we have to talk about what happens when those guys start promoting people, and then their students start promoting and so-on. Do we just downvote all of them for eternity? I think for the community standards to be accepted and recognized by the greater BJJ community, we have to have some sort of system of "amnesty", and I think that these endorsements have their place in solving the myriad issues with always having a 2nd+ degree BB taking the role of the primary promoter. The IBJJF is basically one of these types of "endorsement" systems: - Someone who is a 2nd+ BB gives their blessing and allows me into the system. - I pay a bunch of money and jump through the hoops, receiving my certification, endorsed by Carlinhos. - I wait 3 years, pay some more money and jump through the hoops again, and some underling brings Carlinhos my next certificate that he signs off on, taking <1 second of his time, having never met me in his life. - rinse and repeat for forever.

It's probably worth noting that even the venerable Johan has made concessions to his own rigid voting criteria as he has chosen to upvote my profile despite the fact that I was officially promoted by a 1st degree BB (only ~2 months shy of 2nd degree) with a 3rd degree's OK.

Gordon Ryan was belted by Garry Tonon when he had one stripe with approval from John I presume. Craig Jones was given his black belt by Lachlan Giles when he had one stripe, again probably with approval. Guess they aren't legit black belts by some standards.

Exactly. I don't think any reasonable person, including Johan would downvote a promotion endorsed by someone like Jean Jaques, Gordo, Dannaher, etc., which is why I wouldn't trip too hard about one person downvoting you. I think from Johan's perspective, if I'm interpreting correctly, is that you really need to DOCUMENT these things on your profile, as from his perspective, he's voting on what you've presented him. IMO, Johan is most of the time correct in his assessments, although he and I (and many on beltchecker) differ on our voting criteria: - "I think this profile is not correct": me - downvote. Johan - downvote. - "There is not enough information on this profile for me to determine if it is correct or not": me - do nothing. Johan - downvote. - "I think this profile is definitely correct": me - upvote. Johan - upvote. Of course, Johan can and presumably will continue to explain himself, but I think in all cases, it's definitely best to document everything you possibly can in order to make a good case for yourself if you want positive votes.

One of the funniest things about this whole thread is that we're debating totally arbitrary, made-up rules that have almost nothing to do with actual skill.