Renzo Gracie Pittsburgh 2010 Recap
The new year is here! Looking back on our first year I am surprised at how well it has gone. First of all we have grown in membership from zero to the point where some of our classes are full! From my experience with other academies once the the membership numbers that we have now are reached academies only grow exponentially. This means new workout partners, new friends, and a solid business base. The later should allow us to do more fun extra events such as our trip to NYC and the main Renzo Gracie Academy last July. We had a few other members who where not along for the July trip, individually take advantage of the training at the main school. At Renzo Gracie NYC world champions including two current ufc champions (Edgar and St. Pierre), two of the best jiu jitsu competitors of all times (Roger Gracie and Braulio Estima) as well as many other world level competitors train regularly. While in NYC we had some belt promotions. Logan Stout, Noah Nieman, and Mike Wilkins where awarded blue belts. All of them had at least a year of training in jiu jitsu before starting at RGA Pittsburgh academy, lots of talent, and where long overdue promotions (sandbaggers!!!). Lance Thompson was awarded his purple after only about two and a half years of training including his first year and a half at Steel City (another BJJ academy located South of RGA Pittsburgh). I had the great honor of getting my Black Belt from Renzo Gracie himself with many other of my teachers, friends, and mentors including Shawn Williams, John Danaher, Daniel Gracie, and the Brothers Rolles, Igor, and Gregor Gracie there supporting me. Rolles, it has been a lot of living passing since Cuiaba, Brazil, for me (probably for both of us) but Jiu jitsu has been a constant. Thank you Renzo and thank you to my students and training partners including past and present in Brazil, Costa Rica, California, State College, and now Pittsburgh for helping me past this milestone. We had two other belt promotions including Anthony Previte (officially the second person to join RGA Pittsburgh). Anthony was my first belt promotion. Earlier Daniel Gracie awarded talented Lucas Burdette his Blue Belt as well. Read More