PJ Barch‘s journey to black belt reads like an anomaly in the carefully structured world of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. While most grapplers meticulously track their lineage and ceremoniously receive each belt from a known instructor, Barch’s story takes a different turn. The accomplished grappler, who has twice medaled at ADCC, admits he has no idea who gave him his purple belt.
“I was home for like four months and some guy I never met before gave me a purple belt,” Barch explained during a recent interview. “It was just some guy, man. It was weird. He was like a guy who owns gyms and all these kind of stuff. I just don’t even know his name or his affiliation.”
The unconventional promotion happened while Barch was training in a basement with a black belt from a larger gym system. The owner would occasionally visit and, seeing Barch’s performance, decided he deserved the promotion. When Barch later arrived at 10th Planet San Diego, he felt uncomfortable about the circumstances.
“I told hey look, I kind of want to get my purple belt here, you know,” he said.
What makes Barch’s story even more remarkable is the compressed timeline of his progression. From 2015 to 2017, he went from blue belt to black belt in roughly two years.
“Which is kind of silly to be honest,” Barch acknowledges.
Yet his rapid advancement becomes more understandable when considering his extensive wrestling background. Having competed at the Division I collegiate level, Barch brought elite grappling fundamentals to Jiu-Jitsu that many practitioners spend years developing.
His first introduction to formal Jiu-Jitsu training came in Sweden, where Magnus at a 10th Planet affiliate gave him his blue belt.
“I was kind of beating his resident brown belts and the guys that were at his gym,” Barch recalls.
Magnus told him he couldn’t send him to other gyms as a white belt anymore.
Even as a black belt, Barch felt something was missing.
“I kind of felt like I knew something was wrong with it to be honest,” he said. “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.”
He knew the 10th Planet system but recognized he lacked the broader experience and understanding that typically accompanies the rank.
This sense of incompleteness drove Barch to completely overhaul his approach before his first ADCC appearance. He stripped his game down to essentials, focusing on wrestling, takedowns, back takes, and turtle positions while deliberately forgetting many techniques he had accumulated.
“I decided to just kind of forget a lot of Jiu-Jitsu in a way, a lot of moves,” he explained. The strategy worked, earning him a top-four finish in his ADCC debut.
Now, years later, Barch feels he has finally earned the rank that was perhaps prematurely given. His recent focus on guard passing and working with coaches like Greg Souders on ecological dynamics training methods has filled in the gaps in his technical knowledge.
“I feel like I’ve now officially earned it probably, but at the time I didn’t really feel like that,” he admits.
