Inverted Gear Blog
Tag: Marshal D. Carper
Polaris Pro 3: The Battle for Professional Jiu-Jitsu
The notion of pay-per-view jiu-jitsu is relatively new. Copa Podio and Metamoris were early adopters of the live stream model, and their efforts helped to inspire organizations like Polaris, Budo Videos, IBJJF, Flo Grappling, and the Eddie Bravo Invitational to follow suit. The collective goal is a simple win: Elevate professional jiu-jitsu closer to the height of professional MMA and boxing. If this is successful, the sport as a whole benefits from increased attention, and jiu-jitsu businesses as well as athletes would enjoy additional revenue.Here's the thing. Running a professional grappling organization is really really hard.For starters: The logistics are complex. You have to set up a venue, book athletes and their arrangements, and also coordinate all of the technology...
Nerd Alert
My childhood leisure time was a montage of Earthbound, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy 7, Ultima Online, Halo (16 dudes crammed in a basement playing capture the flag), Pokemon Blue, Pokemon cards, late night Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, and hours upon hours of television, movies and books. I was happiest grinding my way toward a Golden Chocobo or grabbing the rocket launcher on Blood Gulch. All of the other stuff about being a kid—homework, chores, running from bullies—didn’t much matter to me. My hobbies made more sense to me than the “real” world ever did. I could figure out how these fantasy worlds worked, and with a bit of effort, I could become a real force within them. I just...
Jiu-Jitsu Friends Come and Go
Drew, Chris, Bryan, Jerod, Travis, Mike, another Mike, Matt, Ryan, Phil, Kyle—These are all people that I personally convinced to sign up for a jiu-jitsu membership at my home gym, and none of them train with me anymore (that I can recall). A few moved to different cities and continue to train, but most simply quit altogether. Anecdotally, the wisdom goes that 1 out of 10 people will make it from white belt to blue belt. 1 out of 10 blue belts will in-turn become purple belts. If you follow that math through black belt, 1 out of 10,000 people that start jiu-jitsu will stick around to earn a black belt. Unfortunately, we don’t have the hard data to make...
Don’t Forget: White Belts Mean Well
White belts are special people. Their enthusiasm has an intense innocence. They have just stepped into a world full of possibilities and rich with history. They want to experience it all right away and they really sincerely want to get better. Even if they think “knee on belly” is “neon belly” and that a “whizzer” is a “wizard,” their hearts are in the right place.And that’s what many veteran grapplers lose sight of: most white belts mean well.In online communities and in my travels, I sometimes see higher ranked jiu-jiteiros rolling their eyes at newer students or growing frustrated with an unending stream of questions. They go online to complain about a white belt coaching other white belts or worse...
Bobby Fischer Jiu-Jitsu
With Tobey Maguire doing the podcast rounds for his new movie Pawn Sacrifice, Bobby Fischer is reentering the public conversation. Well, maybe not the general public conversation. Chess isn’t the sexy Cold War sport that it used to be, but a few of us probably remember winding our way through the dusty stacks of a public library to find a hidden backroom where dozens of young children quietly hunched over chessboards. Bobby Fischer was something of a hero at the time (and that legacy has been tarnished by his mental unhinging). Searching for Bobby Fischer, a film about child chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin—now a Marcelo Garcia black belt—was just hitting VHS and my brothers and I were giddy with chess...