From the Workbench of Kali

What does it mean to be a provisional Black Belt? I fall into a category of Brown Belt who has never had Purple Belt IBJJF registration. Why didn’t I register? I was promoted a few months before Minnesota went into lockdown, competing was basically done for that year and I couldn’t justify paying for my membership, and after lockdown expired, I had forgotten about IBJJF, and kinda didn’t care about competing with them.

You might be asking me: Isn’t that retaliatory? Kinda? But the expectation is that you should be competing under the organization from White to Black. So I get it. I wouldn’t be dealing with this if I had kept registering.

I can still compete so that doesn’t affect me from reI think it prevents me from doing rules seminars, so I won’t be eligible to Referee tournaments until after January 2026, and only after I complete some additional certification. I also won’t be able to be the Head Instructor of an Academy, but I can be an assistant instructor.

I think my professor is going to do something to fix it. I’m still going to move ahead with certification through IBJJF because it maximizes my competition opportunities. But I’m not going to like it.