BJ Penn Background...

[Fabrizio_De_Santo]

Can some one fill me in on BJ Penn's jiujitsu background? Who his teacher was? His martial arts background - any judo or wrestling?

I was very impressed with his technical ability at this year's Mundial...and in such a short time!

[Martial Artist]

http://www.bjpenn.com

[EJ]

I believe he started with Ralph Gracie, and then went on to train with Nova Uniao in Hawaii.

He is awesome... a phenom. Black belt in 3 years and submitted a few guys en route to winning his black belt division at the Mundials.

Daniel Camarillo used to post here... I'm sure he has more info... so does http://www.onthemat.com

[vortrex]

I was lucky enough to see him as a white belt on his first visit to train with ralph. I had no idea who he was, but even as a white belt with no experience he stood out. ralph would demonstrate a move once and he would just get it, and do it smoooooth. I rolled with him once, oh my, that was so funny.

[Fabrizio_De_Santo]

just read bj's bio...very impressive and he's only been training around 3 - 4 years!

[YeLLa-TiGeR]

The funny thing is he took less time to get a BJJ black belt than it did for me to get my Black Belt in TKD!

[Smokey_D]

Did BJ actually have NO grappling experience when he started BJJ? I read his bio and it said that he did some with his TKD instructor. I wonder how good he was before studying BJJ.

Whatever the case, his bio is really impressive. It sounds like this guy has natural talent dripping from his pores.

[PatrickH]

The guy's a phenom. I used to train At Cesar Gracie's Academy and I always heard about this guy at Ralph's Academy that was suppose to be the "Michael Jordan of jiu-jitsu". We received our blue belts within 6 months of each other and 2-3 years later I'm just now getting close to a promotion to purple "maybe" in 2001. The guy has more natural talent than anyone I've ever seen.

[bobby_steeles]

wow