I think the ibjjf competitions should be mentioned as well. Obviously they attract the best in the world, in gi grappling, anyway, and if you want to compete in their tournaments then you have to jump through their hoops.

There are plenty of folks out there, however, who don't compete in their tournaments at all, but they still want the recognition and everything that goes with it.

This got me to thinking about running a tournament at my gym where you would be obligated to have a verified beltchecker profile in order to register. I'm not confident I'd be able to pull it off. I think what we would need is a bigger organization like smoothcomp to institute something like that if we wanted to try and make beltchecker more of a thing.

Guess I should make sure to keep up my IBJJF membership as I get promoted :|

I still am having trouble getting approved myself for purple.

I got promoted in less than 2 years and now have to get someone who is registered with them to sign a promotion history on top of everything else.

This entire thread has been a real eye opener to me as to just how fortunate my timing was. I registered with ibjjf for the first time last year as a purple belt just in time to register for World Masters. I got promoted to brown belt shortly after the competition and immediately updated my membership. I guess since I was briefly registered at purple I never had to do the provisional thing at brown. I apparently drank the Kool-Aid just in the nick of time.

Finally an upside to slow promotions.

That's what I'm telling myself ;)