After receiving my brown belt I began to focus heavily on teaching and coaching. In this time period Alan was in the UFC's top 10 and offered me the opportunity to organize his first fight camp against a fighter I studied thoroughly. The camp was a huge success and Alan put in a phenomenal performance rocketing himself to as high as #4 in the UFC world rankings. I was hooked on the strategic aspect of combat after this and our professional fight team and BJJ competition team really began to blossom helping me get a lot of experience. I received my black belt January 2014

After a while of living in Jacksonville Daniel Moraes came to me with an opportunity to represent him as a guest instructor for a school in MS while he trained the school's owner for a big UFC headliner fight set to take place in Brazil. The fight was Alan Belcher vs Demian Maia and it was supposed to be Alan's first main event in the UFC. Daniel and Alan planned to fy to Rio to do Alan's training camp, bu they needed someone to teach at lan's udding school while he was away. Daniel recomended me and I jumped on the opportunity. It was only supposed to be for 2 weeks, but while Alan was in Brazil he began to experience symptoms of a detached retina and was forced to fly home early and cancel the bout. Alan ended up needing back to back surgeries, and asked if I would be interested in moving out with my wife and teaching at his school and managing the place as a fulltime job. He was also offering to help me with my strikintraining. It was the perfect opportunity for me and as a purpleelt I moved out for my first fulltime teaching gig with my instructors blessing. My progress here was excellent because Alan was always bringing out elite trainers for his fight camps, including my instructors. I received my brown belt and grew a ton as a martial artist in this time. Daniel and Diego also invited me out for camps they ran with other high profile fighters and I got a ton of great experience training and working with guys I had only been able to watch on TV a year earlier.

After Master Mansor and his partner Paul had a falling out my literal home was torn in two. I remained living in the school and helping true to my original deal with the owneo stayed, but my girlfriend had moved to Florida and the competition scene in Florida was much more active at the time. MMA was still illegal in NY, and I didn't have much keeping me there. I thanked the owner for the opportunity and left for Florida after 2 years living in the gym. I contacted Master Mansor and he recomended that I continue my training under Daniel Moraes in Florida, who was a multiple time world champion in driving distance of where my girlfriend lived. I then moved down and started training with Daniel Moraes and we immediately hit it off. I also trained with another purple belt named Sean Wells who helped me take areas of my game to the next level and had been my girlfriends instructor while I was living in NY, and I started teaching my own class out of a karate school, so I had a place to train everyday that wasn't a 1 or 2 hour drive each way. After a while doing this I moved to Jacksonville to train fulltime under Daniel.

Kioto Jiu-Jitsu held annual promotions with an absolute tournament they called the "iron man". I won the iron man tournament for white belts and received my promotion. I had recently been given the honor of moving into the school to train and compete full time, and to act as an assisstant instructor to the owners Master Mansor and Paul Rodriguez.

My 1st Mixed Martial Arts Smoker bout that happened late in 2003 is when I consider myself becoming a white belt in jiu-jitsu. Even though there was no grappling in my bout, when I saw submission grappling used in sport fights for the first time here it prompted me to join a martial arts school that did "submission grappling" and rent all the videos of early UFC events, then start watching some of the current UFC events. I didn't officially join a BJJ school for a couple more years, but my journey into BJJ started here.