BEND, OR — Bridgepoint Combat Sports announced Tuesday that the academy is parting ways with the national affiliate network it has belonged to since 2014, citing ‘spiritual realignment,’ ‘renewed focus on lineage,’ and ‘the natural evolution of all things sacred,’ in a 14-slide Instagram carousel that did not, at any point, mention the $1,200 annual banner fee until slide 14.
The announcement opened with a black-and-white photo of head instructor and Bridgepoint owner Davis ‘Dav’ Kallenbach, 44, taken from a 2017 promotional shoot the gym still maintains the rights to. Below the photo, in a serif font he reportedly chose specifically because it looked ‘respectful,’ sat the words ‘all good things evolve.’
What followed was a sustained, single-spaced, 1,400-word caption in which Kallenbach used the word ‘lineage’ nine times, the word ‘journey’ eleven times, and the word ‘amicable’ exactly three times: once in italics, once in quotation marks, and once accompanied by the pinched-fingers emoji, which denotes either chef’s kiss or ‘extremely small amount.’
‘This is not a goodbye,’ Kallenbach wrote. ‘This is a beginning. This is Bridgepoint stepping forward, on its own two feet, into the next chapter of a story that has always been ours to tell. With deepest love and respect to our brothers at the Camargo Connection, we go independent — with their blessing, in mutual respect, and in service of the art.’
The Camargo Connection, the Pompano Beach, Florida-based affiliate network Bridgepoint has belonged to for eleven years, has not, at any point, given Bridgepoint Combat Sports its blessing. According to three founding members of the gym, who joined in 2014 and now train in identical gis they are no longer technically allowed to wear, Bridgepoint was kicked out.
‘Yeah no, they got kicked out,’ said purple belt Ron Ashbury, 41, an HVAC contractor who has paid Bridgepoint dues for ten years and seven months. ‘Dav fell behind on the per-student stamps. Like, way behind. He’s been telling everyone it’s a mutual decision but the email from Camargo just said effective immediately. I read it. I was helping him with his printer.’
Slides two through eleven of the carousel were devoted, in order, to: a sunset over the gym’s parking lot; a photo of Kallenbach’s hand on a folded gi; an inspirational quote attributed to Helio Gracie that Helio Gracie did not say; a video clip of a child doing an armbar; a wider shot of the same child; the gym’s mission statement; the gym’s mission statement again, this time on a wood-grain background; a photograph of the original 2014 affiliate banner being respectfully taken down by two purple belts who have since asked not to be associated with the post; and a single black square captioned ‘thank you.’
Slide twelve was a price chart. Slide thirteen was a fee table.
Slide fourteen — captioned, simply, ‘the math’ — broke down the affiliate network’s billing structure in a way that several Bridgepoint members described as ‘the first useful information Dav has ever posted.’ The Camargo Connection, per the slide, charged each affiliate $1,200 per year for the right to display the network’s banner, plus 4% of all monthly dues collected, plus a previously-undisclosed $50-per-student-per-year ‘certification stamp’ that did not appear in the original 2014 contract and was added quietly in 2019 as part of what the network’s annual newsletter described as ‘modernization.’
For Bridgepoint, with 87 active members, the certification stamp alone added $4,350 a year on top of the banner fee and the dues percentage, bringing total affiliation costs north of $14,000 annually for a relationship that, per the slide, primarily entitled the gym to use the network’s logo, attend an annual instructor seminar in Pompano Beach Kallenbach has not personally attended since 2018, and be listed on a directory webpage that has been visibly broken since 2022.
Within 48 hours of the announcement, the Camargo Connection posted its own statement.
‘We respect Bridgepoint Combat Sports’ decision to step away from our family during this difficult market period,’ wrote the network’s official account, which has 31,000 followers and which, when reached for comment, did not immediately respond to a request to clarify which market they were referring to. ‘We thank Davis for over a decade of commitment to the lineage and we wish him well in his independent journey.’
Asked privately whether the post was a polite way of confirming Bridgepoint had been removed, a representative for the Camargo Connection said only, ‘We don’t comment on internal matters,’ and then, after a pause, ‘but yes.’
By Wednesday morning, Bridgepoint had begun selling commemorative patches to its members at a ‘founder’s discount’ price of $80. The patches, members noted, were physically identical to the patches the gym had been issuing for the previous eleven years, with one alteration: the Camargo Connection logo had been cropped off the right edge using what one brown belt described as ‘definitely just scissors.’
In a follow-up Instagram post Wednesday evening, Kallenbach addressed what he described as ‘some confusion in the community.’
‘To clarify,’ he wrote, ‘the word amicable was always intended directionally. We are going independent on principle. This is about freedom. This is about the art. This is about returning to the roots of what we do, free of structures that no longer serve our journey.’ The post tagged 14 of his own students and used the lineage emoji, which is the same as the tree emoji.
That same week, according to registration paperwork posted on Bridgepoint’s own website the morning after the original announcement, Kallenbach had joined the Bauru International Federation, a larger national affiliate network headquartered in Las Vegas that charges affiliates 6% of monthly dues, plus a $1,800 annual banner fee, plus a tiered per-student stamp that begins at $65 a head and rises with gym size.
Asked at Thursday night’s open mat whether he understood that the new network’s terms were, dollar for dollar, more expensive than the ones he had just cropped off his patches, Kallenbach reportedly nodded, smiled, and said, ‘Yeah, but these guys are different.’
The new banners are scheduled to arrive Friday.