SCOTTSDALE, AZ — Derek Salazar, founder and head professor of Ironside Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, confirmed Tuesday that he was “genuinely blindsided” to discover that four of his students had filed belt promotion requests with assistant instructor Travis Heck during the two years Salazar has been running the academy remotely from Portland, Oregon.
“I have a Dropbox folder,” Salazar said from his apartment near the Pearl District, where he has been living since March 2024 after deciding the energy in Scottsdale had “gotten weird.” “All my curriculum is in there. Fundamentals on Monday, guard work Tuesday, passing Wednesday. Week by week. These guys know what to do.”
What they have been doing, in addition to following the Dropbox curriculum on the honor system, is going to Heck. Heck is 27, a purple belt, and holds the key to the building because the previous assistant instructor, brown belt Melanie Rhys, quit in late 2023 with the explanation that “this situation is insane.” Heck teaches six of the eight weekly classes. He manages the booking software. He ordered the mats. He called the plumber when the toilet backed up.
Salazar said he first realized something was off last Tuesday, when he joined a quarterly all-hands Zoom and noticed that blue belt Marcus Tillman — personally promoted by Salazar at a November 2023 in-person visit — was wearing purple.
“I go, ‘Marcus, looking good,’ thinking someone forgot to mention it to me,” Salazar said. “Then I ask Travis where the request went and he says, ‘I sent you a message.’ Apparently eight months ago. In a GroupMe I thought was archived.”
In spring 2024, Salazar sent a newsletter to gym members titled “The Mat Is Everywhere.” It announced a new model: weekly instructional videos, attendance tracked via Google Form, and in-person classes managed by “a trusted senior student facilitator.”
That was Heck.
“I thought of myself as more of a coordinator,” Heck said, reached after the Wednesday no-gi class he taught alone to eleven students. “I kept the schedule. Fixed the dryer. When Derek saw photos of the new blue floor mats he sent me a voice memo saying they looked ‘too corporate.’ I ordered the mats.”
When asked about the promotions, Heck said he held off as long as he reasonably could.
“Marcus was ready. Everyone could see it. He was tapping everyone. I waited six months. I emailed Derek twice. His auto-reply said he was deep in a curriculum redesign project. So I promoted Marcus.”
The other requests — two additional purple belts and a stripe awarded to a 53-year-old accountant named Gerald who had trained five days a week for eight consecutive months and had finally stopped crossing his feet during rear naked choke attempts — followed similar timelines.
“Gerald drives forty minutes each way, three times a week,” Heck said. “He deserved to know he was getting better.”
Salazar doesn’t dispute that the students improved. He disputes who got to say so.
“I’m still the professor,” he said. “I don’t have to be in the room to evaluate someone. I’ve been watching clips. I have eleven saved videos of Marcus rolling. Some of them are really impressive. A couple are a concern.”
He had shared none of this with Marcus or Heck in the past eight months.
“I was formulating feedback,” Salazar said.
He has now scheduled a Zoom call for Friday evening to address the belt situation with the full membership.
“This is a family conversation,” he said. “There are hurt feelings on both sides. We need to talk about what lineage means, what rank means, what it means to receive something from your professor. That transmission has weight. You can’t just hand someone a belt.”
Heck, who had physically handed Marcus a belt, did not respond to a follow-up question.
Eleven of the gym’s twenty-two active members said they plan to attend Friday’s call. Nine said they have a conflict. Two have not opened the GroupMe since February.
Salazar has proposed a compromise: he will review video evidence for each promoted student and issue a formal written acknowledgment of the promotion where warranted. He estimates the process could be complete by late summer.
“They get their belts. I get to be part of the moment. That’s all I’m asking.”
As for returning to Scottsdale, Salazar said it was “on the radar” without specifying when.
“Portland’s been really good for me creatively,” he said. “I’ve been working on a new framework around what I’m calling ‘professor presence’ — the idea that a teacher’s influence doesn’t require physical proximity to be real. I’m almost done with a PDF about it.”
The PDF will be shared in the Dropbox folder.
Gerald, the accountant who received the stripe, said he has no strong feelings about the belt situation but would appreciate clarity on who to pay tuition going forward. He has been splitting payments between Heck and Salazar in alternating months to avoid taking a position.
“Travis is the one who corrected my hips,” Gerald said. “Derek sent me a voice memo last month that I think was about my side control. The audio cut out after twelve seconds. He never re-sent it. I’ve been working with what was there.”
Ironside BJJ’s website still lists Salazar as “Head Professor & Full-Time Mat Presence.”
The page has not been updated since April 2024.