The journey from white to black belt is typically a long, arduous process that takes many practitioners up to a decade to complete. However, for ADCC bronze medalist PJ Barch, this progression was anything but conventional.
In a recent episode of The Grapplers Perspective podcast, Barch revealed a peculiar chapter in his grappling journey – receiving a purple belt from someone whose name he couldn’t even recall.
“I was a blue belt when I was in Sweden under a guy out there, a 10th Planet guy named Magnus,” Barch explained. “He let me train there for quite some time for free when I was just in Stockholm hanging out for like five months or so.”
According to Barch, Magnus promoted him because he was “beating the resident brown belts” at the gym, making it a “disgrace” to continue representing him as a white belt at other gyms.
But the truly unusual moment came later: “I was home for like four months and some guy I never met before gave me a purple belt,” Barch admitted with a laugh. “It wasn’t like it was just some guy, man. It was weird. He was like a guy that owns gyms and all this kind of stuff. I just don’t even know his name or like his affiliation.”
This created an awkward situation when Barch eventually moved to San Diego to train at 10th Planet under Richie “Boogie” Martinez. “When I got to San Diego, I felt quite weird because I was like, ‘I don’t know who gave me this,'” Barch recounted. “I don’t know his name, I don’t know the affiliation, I don’t know anything. So I told Boogie, ‘Hey look, I kind of want to get my purple belt here.'”
From there, Barch’s belt progression accelerated dramatically. “From like 2015 to probably 2017, I went from blue belt to black belt, which is kind of silly to be honest,” he acknowledged.
Barch’s rapid advancement wasn’t entirely without merit. With a strong wrestling background from his youth in Pennsylvania and experience competing in amateur MMA in Hawaii, Barch brought significant grappling experience to jiu-jitsu. However, he admits he still felt unprepared for his black belt promotion.
“I even felt like I knew something was wrong with it, to be honest,” Barch confessed. “I felt like I was beating a lot of black belts and doing really well competitively, but I still felt like I didn’t know any jiu-jitsu. I knew the 10th Planet system, but outside of that system, I felt like I didn’t have a wealth of experience at the time.”
Despite his unconventional path, Barch has since proven himself at the highest levels of competition, earning a bronze medal at ADCC and establishing himself as one of the top competitors in the sport.
“It felt pretty weird,” he concluded about his early promotions. “It wasn’t anything that I was too interested in, getting belted. It didn’t hold the same weight to me from the start. I feel like I’ve now officially earned it probably, but at the time I didn’t really feel like that.”
