It's kind of a joke in Brazilian Jiujitsu social media that after your blue belt then next step is to create a jiujitsu lifestyle brand. Well, I did that after my first 2 stripes in my white belt.
Teamed up with our purple belt coach and a few other people in the team who reached out me and we started a scrappy little company. Started out just doing shirts, then making fight shorts and rashguards. It was just always just for fun but lately we are becoming more serious with it. A few days ago we organized a tournament with grapplers all over The Philippines. The idea was to bring in the best blue and purple belts around the country and do a EBI rules tournament. We were able to pull this off with a crew of 5 people working other jobs. Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of determination and drive. There was a lot of hitches along the way which we couldn't have anticipated. Our event venue cancelled on us 4 days before the event. Their official reason was "we don't promote violence." Which is a load of crap because there had been boxing events there and other places under their corporate umbrella had jiujitsu events before. Thankfully one of partners found a venue that was willing to host us under short notice.
Murphy's law of course visits you when you don't cross your t's and dot your i's. We had 3 people pull out a week before the event. We finished setting up the venue 5 minutes before the start of the event because the venue electrician was nowhere to be found. But we were able to pull it off and the feedback from from people have been 100% positive, with understandably few things we could improve on.
I think the biggest thing jiujitsu teaches you is a mentality of always looking at setbacks as a an opportunity to learn. It also teaches you not to give up so easily. When we were told that we didn't have a venue, we didn't say, ok I guess it's not possible instead we found a way to pull it off. Was really proud of this event and hopefully we can repeat it a few months from now and make it bigger and better.
Photo by Waks Alcaraz
Photo by Waks Alcaraz
This post made me smile. I am so glad to you guys were so determined to make this happen! I guess that's what happens when you are passionate about what you do, kudos on helping the sport grow in your country!
And that setting looks great, I would love to grapple in an open air space like that!
A lot of people wanted us to do this after a really small event we did with 4 superfights two years ago. We didn't want to let them down. Hopefully we can do another one in August.
Good work man keep spreading the art we need more people like you.
Yeah, we need to reach people like the executive team how blocked us because we were "promoting violence" and change their minds.
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Good jop man very nice :)