BJJ Magazine + DVD

Holly McClung Reusing, thank you for this post, There is No Place for Heinous Crime in BJJ Culture, for being a part of the growing village of people who are looking deeply at what we do, why we do it, and what standards we might seek to hold ourselves to. For those reading this, I have to confess that Holly had asked me to contribute some of my thoughts --but I've had a bit of writer's block, due in part to my son's participation in "Team Lloyd Irvin." He sees nothing wrong with staying in that camp and doing nothing. For him, it's "business as usual," and he feels no obligation to the MA community, to us, his parents, or to the world in general. He dispels much of the dialogue as "rumors," says he has little or nothing to do with LI himself, and simply wants to continue to train with his "family" there, regardless of how it feels for his family here.

I had sent a note to LI after the rapes, essentially telling him he was "fired" and to send my son packing--and, of course, he has completely ignored me, except to tell me nothing's wrong in his world and to stop writing him. Keenan has received no small amount of grief from us about the morality of supporting people we consider to be way on the unsavory side, what it means if he actually lets these people give him his black belt (disgrace), and how, sometimes, you have to step up and take a stand for things that might make you uncomfortable --but are, nevertheless, right, just, and required of people with a conscience and set of grounded values.

Of course, Keenan is a 20-year-old man and gets to do exactly what he wants, regardless of how his parents feel. I did that when I was 20 (30, 40, etc.), and so I'm not surprised, just deeply disappointed.

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February 2010:
The air is biting cold as we walk up the icy path to Lyceum “Nicholae Iorga”.  My old friend Sandu, now 19, is sitting with a handful of teenage boys who are making jokes and hitting each other in the back of the head, Three Stooges style.  They are all wearing bomber jackets and skull caps.  This is Moldova’s uniform.  Some have bags and some have athletic pants on and I comment on how much each of them has grown in the past two years.  We call the 24-hour security guy (I use this term loosely) who sends his 5-year old down to the school to give Sandu the key so that we can get into the school.

There are no lights on in the school.  Nor is there heat.  It might actually be warmer outside but the walls of the school protect us from the wind although I can’t say the same for the windows which were supposed to have been replaced sometime 3 years ago.  We walk down the dark hallway which has gone unchanged in my two-year absence.  It is brutally cold in the hallway full of drafty windows and I’m glad that we’re moving because otherwise my hands and toes would be as numb as my face.  And that’s obnoxious.

My “office” where I stored the gis looks virtually untouched with the exception of some new windows that were donated by some Baptists from England.  These windows were sitting collecting dust and will probably continue to do so for the duration.  An attendance list with my handwriting is in the same place by the window where I left it, and all of the donated gis appear to still be there.  Sandu makes one of the bigger kids let me use his gi since I didn’t bring mine.

We go into the gym which has some new paint on the floors but otherwise looks just the same.  The gym is lit by one jury-rigged street light and the walls sparkle with condensation.  It’s like a giant refrigerator in there.  We get the mats out and they look like they’re still in great shape.  No new rips and with the exception of some extra dirt and a piece of gum on one of them, they look like I just left them yesterday.  I can still see my breath as I get out of my nice warm clothes and I shiver as I put on the cold gi over my long underwear. 

It reminds me of when I first introduced the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu program 4 winters ago although then it was a bit warmer. Only by a bit though.

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Because of the internet, devastating news travels so fast now and the recent rape arrest of the Lloyd Irvin Medal chasers, Maldonado &Schultz, have gotten a lot of us thinking. Some of us were already doing that but heinous crime has a way of putting a big fire under folks and even though some of the discussion in BJJ circles has slowed down, the impact has not. It is a reminder that although we would like to believe this recent rape case and the 1990 arrest of Lloyd Irvin are isolated, sex crimes are rampant everywhere and these are not the only serious crimes by martial artists.  Jiu-jitsu is not immune.

Instead of engaging in a fight over one topic, one faction, one person, can we take a break and ask ourselves a larger question? What is really going on in martial arts and where are we headed?

Of course these horrific events are not the norm and do not represent a cross section of the high caliber individuals who train and practice the arts. For those who have devoted their lives in an honorable and forthright manner to training, teaching methods, and business practices, the notion that these events and other various abuses of power that occur in our industry could ever reflect the actual “culture” of what we do every day is heartbreaking to say the least. Abuse of power is not what we do, it is the thing we learn how to stop doing.

The BJJ industry has seen enormous growth and with that comes ever increasing responsibility.  In the 90’s very few people in the US had even heard of BJJ or MMA, or the UFC. Most of us think everyone follows the UFC, but just ask your fellow PTA moms if they watch the fights and you will often get a blank stare. Many know about BJJ but everyone knows about martial arts and they will automatically attach BJJ to what they already know about martial arts.

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