Back in 2013 DC got promoted from white belt to brown belt in BJJ and Faber's coach was really annoyed with it

One of the most famous ones of these is Rashad Evans receiving his black belt. Watch any of his fights, he has no guard or BJJ, Rashad is and was a wrestler just like Cormier but a dominant MMA fighter. Cormier can at least finish fights on the ground, but that still doesn't make him good at jiu-jitsu, his hips and game off the back are stiff and not very technical, he just has a massively heavy base like all wrestlers. At the end of the day, someone who is ranked black belt makes the call to promote people and their criteria can be whatever it is. It's just more proof that the belts more or less are so oversaturated that they become mudied to their significance, belts mean what you want them to but it's fact there are BJJ belts from gyms that are more meaningful than others, who cares if he has a black belt when a purple belt from another gym beats the breaks off them in pure BJJ, oh well.

I've been training BJJ for going on 13 years and there has always kind of been this stigma around the fringe of people who enjoy MMA that because of the Gracies and their introduction of the art to the UFC/MMA, it breeds a machismo concept of 'if i can dominate you i am better than you', that's not true in the slightest and not to gatekeep but real martial artists will understand the differences between technique and testosterone, it becomes very obvious when you start training with women and stop 'mansploding' to overcome technical deficits.

/r/MMA Thread Parent Link - grapplinginsider.com