What do you consider "bad character'? Does someone with a huge, out of control ego but good jits get a pass? Do you care more about character of quality of BJJ? Do you kick someone out who is constantly bragging and talking crap and bosting about tapping people out all the time?

I think someone that is a jerk talks about his taps and shows an unhealthy ego he/she is an asshole, but does not necessarily has bad character.

Character isn't about hurting feelings as much as it is about harming the school, students or sport. I guy that is hitting on the female students constantly harms the school and damages the atmoshere that is required, IMO, for a good cohesive school. There is a guy at one of the gyms I roll at. He is a solid 220 at 29 or 30 years old and has very good jiu jitsu. He has injured several guys that I know of. Few of black belts like him. I'm a 53 year old brown belt who is an out-of-shape 170 lbs. I used to avoid him as much as I could, but he'd call me out from time to time and I'd really get a sense of exactly where my jiu jitsu was at because surviving without getting hurt, or worse injured, meant my game was spot on. It didn't happen very often that I woke up without a nagging pain in my neck or ribs from this guy. I was so disappointed that he was awarded his black belt I stopped going to the gym. He was kicked out shortly after getting his black belt for hurting a student, yet again. I think character, skill, and knowledge should be the determining factors in awarding a black belt.

So then what defines bad character? Cause rolling hard, for me, doesn't necessarily define bad character but being disrespectful to everyone around you, including your coaches, is.

Disregard for your rolling partner's well-being is one defining characteristic of bad character. I don't mind hard rolls. Torn rotator cuffs/labrums from kimuras, neck cranking a guy 100 pounds less than you hard and fast enough that the guy still has neck issue a couple of years later, tapping white belts with shoulder pressure from side control on day one isn't a hard roll. It is a guy that likes to hurt other people. I don't mind being sore for a few days after a hard roll. We all know that injury is inevitable in this sport, but you like to think your teammates are rolling as hard and they can AND as safely as they can. We have a saying in our school that you don't want to break your toys. This guy hulk smashes his toys.

I like that. I'm going to use this today in class and pretend I made it up myself and not give you an ounce of credit.

Careful, your character is showing :-)

HA! I hear you about the smasher types. I think every gym has one or two of those. Sometimes they are the well known competitors....I would even go so far as to say they are OFTEN the successful competitors. Which sucks but makes some sense, I guess.

I can give two shits about their skills. If they're a POS and the they don't fix their shit after I talk to them, then... Peace Out bro! I don't want the best people, I want the right people on my team! And I have booted people! I have no problem doing that. I don't need their money that bad. Their monthly dues and/or skills are not worth the risk of loosing multiple students to their shitty attitude/ego. I have a very specific environment that I worked my ass off to build at my academy and I'm not letting some fucktard ruin it.

I'm with this 100%. Your skill is completely irrelevant as to whether you stay at my gym. It's why our policy is that amateur fighters pay until their pro and then they don't pay.
And we suggest they get an independent agent so we aren't taking any money form their purse. That way their value won't influence our need to "keep" them.

I guess there are two types of asshole that I’m concerned about. If someone is doing stuff that is societally unacceptable (beating people up on the street, sexually harassing people, etc) then it’s easy. They just can’t train at our gym.

If it’s someone who lacks social graces to the point where it is effecting our mat culture, like being rude to other students, unhelpful to new students, unwilling to work or communicate with others, then I think talking to them and giving them opportunities to change and move from negative for the group to positive (or at least neutral) is useful. I have no problem promoting someone who has asshole tendencies, but is trying to work on them for the sake of the group. If they don’t work on them, they always seem to leave anyway, so promotion becomes a moot point.

If it’s outside of the gym, then run of the mill asshole behavior (being a jerk to waitstaff, driving like an asshole, etc…) isn’t really any of my business from a Bjj perspective, so it wouldn’t effect promotion, but it would make me socialize less with them for sure.