Hillary Williams at the 2010 Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championship.
Hillary Williams, the jiu-jitsu brown belt who burst on to the international competition scene when she earned a bronze medal at the 2009 ADCC Submission Grappling Championship, celebrated another important victory on Sunday at the 2010 Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championship in Irvine, California. The pre-medical student earned the gold medal in the brown / black division among the women, an impressive feat given that it was her first year in the deeper waters where the best female grapplers in the world mix it up. It should not come as too much of a surprise however, considering that she won the gold in the purple belt division just a year ago.
To hear her tell it, Hillary’s weekend began on a sour note. In a conversation with The FightWorks Podcast yesterday, Williams described her Saturday in the tournament’s open divisions as “disappointing”, and “two lackluster performances”. In one of her matches Hillary faced a familiar opponent in Alliance’s Gabrielle Garcia. Gabi and Hillary competed against each other at the 2009 No Gi Worlds in an encounter that ended with Gabi being disqualified by the referee. On Saturday Garcia came out with a score to settle, taking down Williams, landing side mount, and sinking a deep keylock on Williams’ far side arm. The submission was to become Garcia’s signature move through out the weekend, but almost ended Hillary’s. She was later seen using her gi belt as a sling for the arm and asking if anyone had ibuprofen.
“The shoulder hurts,” Hillary said. “But it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be”. She clarified that while she was hurt on Saturday, she was not injured.
On Sunday Williams came out with something to prove. “I went back and grappled they way I know and it worked out for me.”
She first faced Jacqueline Andrade of Las Vegas-based Team Micah. While Hillary admits to feeling intimidated at first, she ended up sweeping Andrade, passing her guard, and getting a keylock from side mount. Her next opponent was CheckMat BJJ’s Luiza Monteiro, an encounter made more difficult because Monteiro and Williams are friends. While Hillary relates that it was “hard to separate” that friendship from the competitor’s need to win, she overcame. After passing Monteiro’s guard, she mounted and choked Monteiro to win the gold medal in her division.
Not one to dwell on her own accomplishments, Hillary made a point to remark how Kayron Gracie surprised and inspired those in attendance on Sunday. The son of Carlos Gracie Jr. was only recently promoted to black belt but eliminated some of the toughest middleweights in Brazilian jiu-jitsu today, including 2008 world champion Sergio Moraes. Kayron eventually fended off a relentless Abmar Barbosa to win the gold medal in his debut performance as a black belt.
“I want to be that person,” Hillary confided.
While some would argue that Williams already is an inspiration to aspiring jiu-jitsu athletes, she will have one more chance to prove it this weekend. She just arrived in the United Arab Emirates in search of big prize money at the Abu Dhabi Pro.
Although top contenders Gray Maynard and Kenny Florian are waiting in the wings, former champ B.J. Penn may get the first shot at newly crowned UFC champion Frankie Edgar's lightweight belt.
Penn dropped a decision and lost his belt to Edgar in the co-main-event of UFC 112 this past weekend on April 10.
However, Penn today said - though nothing is official - that he's spoken with UFC officials and that an immediate rematch is in the works and a real possibility.
We got this idea for a poll from one of the Mighty 600,000 in Southern California. He writes:
[Where I train] we do 8 months till you get your blue belt, 2 years as a blue belt till you get your purple belt year and half for till you get your brown and year and half till you get your black, how do others schools work with their promotion. I have been seen some blue belts at some tournaments that were blue belts when i was a white white belt and i am getting ready to be a purple in 2 months and i see the same blue belts lol… What do you think??? Should the IBJJF regulate a school or professor to make it known that this guy got his belt at this time.
Currently the IBJJF does offer some pretty strict guidelines about when certain belt promotions are possible, but they do not mandate a promotion after a specified time frame. This would certainly prohibit perceived sand bagging at tournaments, and remove instructors’ discretion about when a student is ready to be given a new jiu-jitsu belt ranking.
What do you think? Should the IBJJF adopt a policy like the one described above, where a student will receive certain belts after a given time period? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below after you vote!
With former champions such as Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Frank Mir recently being blown out of the water by opponents many consider to be the new breed of heavyweights in the UFC, current heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar views the current state of big men in the promotion as a passing of the guard of sorts.
“Shane’s a tough guy and I just know that Frank’s time is done,” said Lesnar in a recent article on Yahoo! Sports. “This is the new evolution of the heavyweight division. Brock Lesnar, Shane Carwin, Cain Velasquez, Junior dos Santos, we’re the guys in this division.”
As far as Shane Carwin’s newly earned interim heavyweight title is concerned, Lesnar had no problem in giving the newly crowned champ his due…. well, sort of.
“This belt thing, well, hopefully he enjoys the moment,” said Brock. “He should enjoy the win over Frank, but he has to realize that I’m the heavyweight champion. Everybody knows that. Good for him winning that fake belt.”
And while Carwin may currently lay claim to what Lesnar deems to be a “make believe belt”, the formidable former WWE superstar will be the first to admit that Carwin will be no walk in the park come UFC 116 when the two hulking titans are set to clobber one another for the right to be called the true undisputed heavyweight king of the UFC.
“I had to pull out against him last fall and I didn’t feel good about that,” said Lesnar. “But I couldn’t fight a guy like that if I wasn’t in the best shape of my life. I had to do what I had to do.”
“That was a business decision that the UFC had to make,” Lesnar said. “Really, that belt is a make-believe belt to satisfy the company and to satisfy the people in the heavyweight division. I’m still the heavyweight champion.”
“What’s said outside of the Octagon is all purely entertainment,” Lesnar said. “I dislike Frank — there isn’t an opponent in the Octagon that I really truly like. That’s the battle of competition. I’m not a grudge-holder, but the first and foremost thing to me is, When I get in that Octagon I respect no one. And that’s the bottom line for me.”
“If Shane Carwin is a better version of Brock Lesnar, then the fight’s over in the first 30 seconds — I feel bad for Frank,” Lesnar said. “Frank has a history of putting his foot in his mouth and let’s just see what happens Saturday night. I’m anxious to fight either one of those opponents. Both of them I’ve got some history with. … I can sit back and watch and let these guys fight over who wants to come after Brock Lesnar, the UFC heavyweight champion.”
Brock Lesnar, speaking on ESPN, comments on the upcoming UFC interim heavyweight title bout between Shane Carwin and Frank Mir.
Although top contenders Gray Maynard and Kenny Florian are waiting in the wings, former champ B.J. Penn may get the first shot at newly crowned UFC champion Frankie Edgar's lightweight belt.