Interview: Mauricio Gomes On Belt Tests & Wrapping Up

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In the previous instalment of this four part interview, Mauricio spoke about his history teaching BJJ. In the final part this week, he shares his views on the growing trend of belt tests in BJJ, along with a couple of closing statements.

slideyfoot.com: There are several schools in the US which use a formal belt test to grade their students, do this technique, do that technique and so on. For example, Alliance, Pedro Sauer and ATT. What do you think of that practice?

Mauricio Gomes: I don't really know what that is, so I can't really comment directly on that, as I don't really know what they do. We still use the old style, if you want to put it that way, if testing is a new style: I don't really know, that's why I don't want to compare. The only thing I can say is how we do it. The student gets their stripes, then when they get their fourth stripe, they're considered for their next belt. But, first there will always be respect for the rules of the international confederation. I believe that no matter what happens, in any situation, you need rules. Those rules are given by a board of people who are there for that. In a country, it is the congress that gives the laws, in our case, it's the confederation.

I see people nowadays using the same belt as me, and they got their black belt ten years after me. It's very hard to swallow that. I think they probably had their reasons, I'm not going to go into that, because it doesn't really concern me, but I would be extremely ashamed knowing that I'm not there yet but have the belt. It's like, if a guy is a blue belt, you give him a brown, but skipped purple belt and it doesn't matter, you're a brown belt now. There has to be that process, going through your four stripes, then there is like a minimum of two years to get from one belt to the other. There are some situations you've got to respect. That's what the rules are there for.

slideyfoot.com: Talking about this, one of the arguments I hear from the people who like the belt testing idea is "well, otherwise the instructor can't know if the student understands all the techniques, maybe they're just strong, maybe they're just really good with their triangle."

Mauricio Gomes: No, that's not possible, no. A good instructor, that is training their students, with them every day throughout the year, believe me, they know who is capable of doing what and who is ready for this or that. Believe me, they know. I know, so they must know too, right? If not, what are we doing here? Having a coffee while everybody is training? You are there to do your job. Your job is to look after your students, teach them the best you can and help them through. That's what we're there for.

Otherwise, it would just be open the door, put a mat down, then "let's rumble," then "ok, time to go." You wouldn't need an instructor. What do we get paid for, for nothing? I believe that the instructor knows what they're doing, has to know what they're doing. They will know who is ready for this or that. They have to know.

slideyfoot.com: Do you happen to remember who the first female black belt was? I've asked various people this question, as have others. So far the top three contenders seem to be Karla Gracie (Carlinhos' sister, mentioned in a 1997 Black Belt Magazine), Patrícia Lage (who competed as a black belt at the 1998 Brasileiros, though she herself has said there were others before her) and Kim Gracie (Rickson's ex-wife, who may possibly have been a black belt in 1997).

Mauricio Gomes: Honestly, I'm not going to lie to you, I don't know. I think a lot of girls were training, but it's probably the same situation with something like "who did the first flight?" The Wright brothers, or that French guy who was living in Brazil, Santos-Dumont. There probably were a lot of things going on, so who is going to know the first black belt woman in history? I don't think you'll ever find that answer. It would probably be things happening more or less at the same time. Alexandre Paiva's wife is one, I remember her getting her black.

I'm quite certain that these girls, Kim and Karla, I don't think they trained at all, or if they did train, not enough to get a black belt. This is me guessing, and I know them both. Maybe they did, I don't know.

slideyfoot.com: The main source that the Karla story comes from, and perhaps it wasn't well researched, is that Black Belt Magazine article. It was going through all the Gracie family members, then it said Karla was "the only female family member to reach black belt." Maybe they got the name wrong, or it was a political thing to put that in?

Mauricio Gomes: I think in the Gracie family, the first woman to get a black belt was Kyra. No doubt about that, no other Gracie woman got her black belt. No way, I would have remembered that, because Karla would be my ex-wife's sister. So I would have known, or somebody would have told me, "oh, Karla got her black belt," or I would hear "oh, Karla has been training a lot."

slideyfoot.com: You are well-known for your knee on belly. Is that something you've always been really good at and worked on?

Mauricio Gomes: I worked on it a lot, yeah, over the years. You know how fighters are, over the years. If a judo player trains for many years, they will have one or two really, really great takedowns that if they catch wind of it in any position, they'll take their opponent down. In jiu jitsu, it is probably the same thing. My knee on belly is something that I'm so comfortable with, I've been doing it for so long, it's something I now do well.

slideyfoot.com: Did you start doing that at blue belt, white belt, or did it come in later?

Mauricio Gomes: Blue belt. It is one of those things, you like what you do. Blue and purple belt is the time you start experimenting with a lot of things. "I like this, I don't really like that much." I probably got along well with the knee on stomach.

slideyfoot.com: Is there anything else you'd like to say to the readers of this website?

Mauricio Gomes: Keep on training! [laughs]

[Pic included by kind permission of Zafar Hashmi]

Thanks again to Mauricio for agreeing to speak to me, and thanks also to Geeza for bringing him down to GB Bristol. For more Mauricio, check out Issue #7 of Jiu Jitsu Style, available now. More recently, you can check out this 2013 interview with Mauricio on the Open Mat Radio podcast.

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Interview: Mauricio Gomes on Teaching in the UK & Japan

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In the previous instalment of this four part interview, Mauricio spoke about his son, Roger Gracie. This week, he reflects on his time as a teacher, especially in the UK.

slideyfoot.com: You were a pioneer of BJJ in the UK. Did you ever meet Chen Morales, who was here a little earlier?

Mauricio Gomes: Chen Morales used to teach in London, I met Chen. I brought Renzo over for a seminar, and Chen attended the seminar, that's where I met him. He used to teach at the Budokwai, the club that later on was given to us, we're still there. I'd heard of him, and then his students used to go to Birmingham once a week on Saturdays, to train with the guys there. I think I did one lesson in his academy, he invited me. I think he moved to Spain after that.

slideyfoot.com: So you didn't have a chance to check out the other schools in the UK at that time?

Mauricio Gomes: No, I started my school, and I used to work so much, all day. You put all those classes on, you have to be there. Even if only one or two students show up, it doesn't matter, you know? That's what I tell these boys now. The classes are full, there are always a lot of people. I had a zillion times where I had one person show up, or sometimes two. You've still got to do your job, right? [laughs]

slideyfoot.com: I guess because you taught in various other places around the world, like Japan, you already knew what it was going to be like, so you had the motivation to get past those small numbers. Or was it just that you knew jiu jitsu was good, so classes would eventually start expanding?

Mauricio Gomes: You always have the motivation, as when you start something, you want to see it through. When I started that school in Japan, in about two months, I had 290 students, something like that. But Tokyo is an easy city to have a lot of students: one block around you, there's a zillion people living there! [laughs] It's a very populated city.

I think once you're confident in the work that you present, you don't worry so much. People have to understand that a jiu jitsu school is like any other business. It's like having a shop. You open up your door in the morning, stay there all day, close the door at night, go home to bed. The only difference is that we fight all day. [laughs]

slideyfoot.com: As you've been teaching for many years now, do you approach it differently, to try and maintain your interest level, or has it become your job? Is there still that passion?

Mauricio Gomes: I still have the same passion. I teach today as if I was teaching for the first time. I care a lot about the quality, trying to do the best I can. Also, we are so few, that came from Rolls, I to this day still try to give exactly the same I was given. I think I've succeeded in that. I can go to bed and sleep calmly at night, thinking to myself "ok, I've tried my best to pass on the information as I received it."

slideyfoot.com: Do you have any other favourite memories from the early days of BJJ in the UK?

Mauricio Gomes: I've got a lot of good memories in the UK, in my school, students that are doing well, sometimes when you have a visitor from another place and your student takes care of it, that kind of thing. It is very rewarding. The compensation of a teacher comes in seeing their students. It is like when you are trying to grow something. You plant it, and if you plant it well, it will grow nice and strong. That's what jiu jitsu does. You plant a little seed, then you see that flourish.

slideyfoot.com: Speaking of growing, there are quite a few home grown black belts in the UK now, thanks to pioneers like you: do you think the UK has reached maturity in BJJ, or does it still have a long way to go?

Mauricio Gomes: There is still a long way to go. The maturity will come. It is very big, it has grown a lot, but I think the maturity of all of this will come when you have loads of kids and adolescents participating, competing and all that, like they have in the other martial arts. That's your future. It is when you get a six, seven, eight year old and see them all the way through to black belt, that's maturity.

For now, you see that the ages are getting lower. There are a lot of young people now, and that age needs to get lower and lower. It's a long process, but I think it is already starting. It will mature pretty soon.

[Pics included by kind permission of Amari Stark]

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Interview: Mauricio Gomes on Roger Gracie

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In the first instalment of this four part interview, Mauricio spoke about the development of competition in BJJ. In this week's discussion, he talks about his son, Roger Gracie.

slideyfoot.com: It's interesting you mention sponsorship there, because in Roger's case, he always wears a plain gi, you don't see lots of sponsors all over him.

Mauricio Gomes: He never really had a sponsor, except Keiko Sports, who have been helping him since he was about sixteen years old. They sponsored him for quite a while, blue belt, purple belt, all the way to black. Even now, I think at Roger's last two competitions, he made a deal with Keiko on the day to use the gi. I don't know what kind of terms, because I don't get involved in the financial side of things.

Roger still has his gym, so he still has to look after his gym, teach, see what's going on, is it good, is it bad, is anything missing. On top of all that, he has to train three or four times a day for months and then go to the competition. A lot of other guys that are competing at that level, they don't have gyms. They are part of some gym, but they usually don't have their own gym, running it, not all of them. Marcelo Garcia has his, but most of them, they come from a group. That group is their training camp.

But it's a lot of money, and these competitions don't give you anything back. It's a medal, a handshake and an "attaboy!" [laughs] But you have to see it that way, because it's an amateur sport. Amateur sports maybe give a prize, but other than that, you would have to go to the professional level, which would be MMA or something like that.

slideyfoot.com: I'm sure you've been asked this many times before, but do you think there is anything unique about your son Roger that enables him to be so successful, or was it just down to hard work?

Mauricio Gomes: I'm a bit biased of course, for me he is a very special boy. Not only because he is my son, but it is about what he has achieved and the humility he always has. I see sometimes a very clear example. You see at this competition we're at now [the GB Submission Only], you see people fighting, one has to win, the other has to lose, everything is normal. Now, how do you win and how do you lose? That's the main quality that the fighter will have to show sometime in their life.

I see people sometimes, they won the fight, fair and square, no doubting about that. Then the other one, perhaps they're hurt for some reason, a popped knee, or something like that. The first guy, they won, so obviously they're happy. I've seen in some situations the guy screaming his head off in the middle of the mat, while his opponent is lying on the floor, all wrecked, but the winner doesn't have the decency to help out the other guy. "What happened, are you ok, what can I do," something like that. No, he goes around screaming this and that, jumping up and down. I find that is a huge lack of respect to your fellow competitor.

Obviously, some people don't care about that, I see that as a negative point. Maybe it is just me, maybe I'm an old timer, but I find it weird.

slideyfoot.com: Roger is of course well know for being humble, he wouldn't do that.

Mauricio Gomes: Exactly. The fight he had with Demente at the last Mundial, Demente's arm was about to break. Roger let the arm go to try something else, you know? That's a good demonstration of fair play in a fight. You're fighting, it's all fine, anything goes, you can do this, you can do that. It's all damaging, really bad. But how do you apply that, how do you deal with that? How do you win, how do you learn to lose? A fighter is composed of many things. It's not just an ability to fight and how much gas there is in the tank, no. There are also the qualities that will make that fighter always grow. Otherwise my friend, we're just here eating grass.

slideyfoot.com: Since RGA 2 opened in Kilburn back in 2009, there are quite a few RGA affiliates now, even internationally with Helio's school in Angola among others. Do you see the Roger Gracie Academy as a separate team, or still an off-shoot of Gracie Barra?

Mauricio Gomes: I think that Roger, when he competes, to this day, he never used his academy name. So as far as I'm concerned, he is still Gracie Barra. If he is Gracie Barra, competes for Gracie Barra, training at Gracie Barra his entire life, I would say it's still the same thing. I don't see a difference, not yet, anyway.

[Pics included by kind permission of Zafar Hashmi]

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Interview: Mauricio Gomes on the Development of Competition

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Back in December, Rolls Gracie black belt Mauricio Motta Gomes was down at Gracie Barra Bristol to teach a master class, just before the submission only competition. I was able to grab a few minutes to speak with him: I'll be splitting the results into four parts over the next month or so, discussing his son Roger Gracie, teaching around the world and belt tests, among other topics. First up, Mauricio shares some of his thoughts on competition.

slideyfoot.com: If you had to pick one thing that marked Rolls Gracie as special, what would it be?

Mauricio Gomes: He was quick in his submissions. He was the type of the guy that would teach us a position, it was new for us. To show how that thing was effective, he would tell us "ok, now I am going to show how good this is, and I'm going to roll with all of you, and I'm going to get you all in the same thing." So, we knew what he was going to do, but we couldn't avoid it. He would still get us all.

Plus, he would always try to add in whatever another martial art could bring. Always. It was an amazing time, believe me. That was the end of my adolescent years, and I made the most of it! [laughs]

slideyfoot.com: Do you think that BJJ has changed for the better since Rolls' time, or is there anything that perhaps has been lost and you'd like to bring back?

Mauricio Gomes: I think what has been lost in jiu jitsu over the years...I think that much is different, we used to train a lot for competitions in a different way. I don't know, sometimes I look back and I try to compare our competitions to the competitions of today. What I see is that there are a lot of people training situations where they can hold on for dear life, or holding a fight up to a situation where you'll try to score a point, a half point, this or that, just before the finish of the fight, to become the winner.

I think that everybody should train to finish the fight. That should be the main goal of everybody. I would never encourage my students to just hold on to something, four minutes, five minutes, six minutes, whatever. "Then you can do this, and obtain the victory." That's a mistake. I don't know what happened, I don't know if jiu jitsu grew too much and there are too many competitors. Now you've got advantages and a lot of people started to stall, or don't want to finish the fight. They want to stay there forever. Obviously they put in time limits, advantages, they got this, they got that.

At the end of the day, I think that the focus should always be to finish the fight, how to get there as quick as possible. No stalling, no this, no that. Unfortunately, the competitors of today got to a point where the higher level fighters, there is no difference between them and an Olympic athlete. They train like they're going to the Olympics. They're really up for it. If you're going for these competitions and not prepared physically, you will lose. Even if you know a lot, today, that's not enough. It's the knowledge, but it's also your body and mind, are you physically fit.

You go to a competition these days, and you have like eight or nine fights, if you're looking at your weight and the absolute – I'm talking about black belts, right? It is usually like that, eight or nine fights over the weekend. You've got to be fit. They are ten minute fights, so if you don't finish your opponent right away, that goes on for ten minutes, then another ten, then another ten. So if you're not really fit, then over those two days you'll gas out.

slideyfoot.com: Was that less the case back when you were competing?

Mauricio Gomes: Yeah. We trained a lot, absolutely, trained like warriors, and we did a lot of physical conditioning. Running, walking on the soft sand on the beach, swimming. But nowadays it is just another level, it isn't like it was. It's the evolution, you know? That's normal, nothing stays the way it used to be. In this case, it changed for the best. The competitions are very competitive, the fighters are athletes, proper athletes. If you want to be a very good competitor, you have to have a good sponsorship. You require money.

You know how long a fighter prepares themselves for one competition? Obviously they never start from scratch, they maintain a certain level. Two to three months, at least, before a competition they start increasing their sparring, their fitness level and all that, to go all the way up to the level they want to be at to go for that competition. They have to sacrifice a lot in order to do that. They can't have a proper job, because they're training all day, so they need money to survive all this.

It's money for food, to pay for other people to train you. In the old days, you just think you do a run in the morning, something else in the afternoon, but today, the levels are completely different. You have a guy that is actually your instructor, for conditioning, for fitness, for the muscular part, a nutritionist, you know? All of this comes together to make you the proper athlete, fit and ready for the event. In the end, to reach this level requires a lot.

Next week, the discussion moves on to Mauricio's thoughts on his son Roger Gracie's success in competition.

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