COLUMBUS, OH — Bryce Dillingham, a 27-year-old IT project manager and four-month white belt at Apex MMA, arrived at Saturday’s open mat with a GymBoss interval timer, a laminated one-page FAQ, and the unshakeable confidence of a man who has never once been submitted and realized it was his fault.
Dillingham positioned the timer at the exact center of the mat edge — measured, reportedly, using a tape measure he also brought — and set it to 8-minute rounds. The gym had agreed on 5.
“He just walked in and started configuring it,” said purple belt Kendra Osei, who was mid-roll when a deafening beep announced the start of a round nobody asked for. “None of us even knew what was happening. Marcus and I were three minutes into a great scramble and this guy screams ‘TIME!’ like he’s reffing ADCC.”
When confronted about the discrepancy, Dillingham produced the FAQ — titled “Why 8-Minute Rounds Are Optimal: A Brief” — which cited something called the “anaerobic threshold adaptation window” and referenced four studies, none of which were from peer-reviewed journals. One was a blog post. Another was a Men’s Health article from 2019 about kettlebells.
“He told me the 5-minute standard was ‘legacy thinking,’” said brown belt Marcus Webb. “I’ve been training for eleven years. This man learned what a shrimp was in January.”
Dillingham reportedly also announced the start of each round at what he called “regulation volume” — a designation that does not exist in any governing body’s rulebook, largely because open mat does not have a governing body.
Coach Dave Almeida asked Dillingham to stop. Dillingham asked Coach Dave if the gym had a “formal feedback process” and whether this would be handled “through the appropriate channel.” When told the appropriate channel was Coach Dave telling him to stop, Dillingham produced a second laminated document — a pre-written counter-argument titled “Rebuttal: Timer Autonomy at Unstructured Training Sessions” — and requested a formal appeal.
“I’ve coached jiu jitsu for twenty-two years,” Almeida said. “I have never received a laminated rebuttal.”
Several students noted that Dillingham’s timer also featured a custom label reading “PROPERTY OF B. DILLINGHAM — DO NOT ADJUST” in Dymo tape, suggesting this was not his first timer-related confrontation.
As of press time, Dillingham had emailed the gym’s general inquiry address requesting the minutes from Saturday’s open mat, apparently unaware that open mat does not produce minutes.
He has also reportedly created a shared Google Doc titled “Open Mat Round Length — Discussion & Voting” and sent the link to every member of the gym’s WhatsApp group. It currently has zero editors and fourteen people who have left the chat.