Max Holloway has been promoted to BJJ black belt by Professor Pedro Sauer, an announcement that came just days after Charles Oliveira spent three rounds demonstrating exactly what a black belt can do to you if you don’t have one.
The promotion, which Sauer says recognizes Holloway’s “20-plus years of dedication to the art,” was coincidentally timed with Holloway’s most recent UFC performance — in which Oliveira controlled him on the ground for approximately 11 of 15 minutes, attempting submissions with the casual ease of someone helping a child put on a jacket.
To be fair, surviving that long without getting submitted IS a legitimate skill. It’s just not traditionally what black belt ceremonies celebrate.
“The black belt represents mastery of jiu-jitsu fundamentals,” Sauer said in the announcement, which did not mention the phrase “getting absolutely sonned on live television” even once.
The community response has been divided between those who respect Holloway’s two decades of training and those who watched the Oliveira fight and have questions.
“Twenty years of training is twenty years of training,” said one commenter. “But also, we all watched the fight. We all saw it. With our eyes.”
Others have pointed out that the promotion creates an interesting philosophical question: if a black belt gets controlled on the ground for an entire fight, is the belt a measure of skill or a measure of time?
At press time, Holloway’s black belt had not responded to requests for comment regarding what it plans to do differently in the next fight.