Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Brown Belt Mike Palladino exposes a man posing as a BJJ Black Belt in Marlboro, NY. His name is Jay Queiroz.

First a little about Mike Palladino:
Mike Palladino, is an active Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Player, Submission Grappler, and Founder of Evolution Grappling Academy. At the time, Mike was a BJJ Brown belt under the tutelage of 3x IBJJF World Champion and Soul Fighters Co-Founder, Rafael Formiga Barbosa, and Submission Grappling Wizard and Sambo Master Vladislav Koulikov.

A practitioner of combat sports for close to a decade, Mike is a 2x Pan American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Medalist and multiple time Submission Fighting champion, holding 7 championship titles under his belt. [source : evolution-bjj.com]

In an article he wrote for jiujitsutimes.com, Mike writes about what led up to him confronting the Fake BJJ black belt, Jay Queiroz, about his claims and the confrontation itself, which you can also watch in the video below.

“When I first saw Jay Queiroz’s videos, it was clear this man was no BJJ Blackbelt. I did my research for two days before outing him. I wanted to make sure before I took any action, that I made the proper phone calls to coaches, teammates, and other black belts (on GFTeam) and had them watch the videos.

I immediately felt for his students, who blindly were in a trance under Jay’s spell. Jay was giving out blue belts in a matter of weeks. Of all the belts in Jiu-Jitsu, a blue belt brings with it a sense of accomplishment. On average it takes anywhere from 10-18 months to receive a Blue belt. Practitioners of BJJ come in all different shapes, ages, sizes, and genders.

What takes one practitioner 6 months to do, may take another student 18 months. The adjectives of handwork, dedication, sacrifice, blood, sweat, tears etc, are a broad generalization for what really does go into receiving a Blue belt.

The countless hours on the mat, the struggle of being the bottom rung on the ladder, fighting and arguing with your significant other and then going to train, overtime at work, not having the cardio to continue, a bruised ego, the list goes on and on for a fraction of reasons one takes the exit ramp on route to their Blue.

The sanctity that lies within the achievement of a Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is unlike ANY other Martial Art due to the purity of the art which exists because of it’s loyal and dedicated practitioners.

For Jay to undermine what goes into receiving the first belt on the Jiu-Jitsu ladder was a major reason for this expos’.”

Here’s what Jay Queiroz’s student and website designer Nick M. had to say about the fake BJJ black belt:

I trained with Jay for a few months (about 3) it seemed a bit sketchy from the start I’ll admit but, I overlooked it because he seemed like a nice person. During that time I got a blue belt in a few weeks which made me completely sketched out because, from what I read it takes the best of the best a minimum of 6 months to get a blue belt and I’d say I’m just average.

Too add to that he didn’t have any belt higher then purple until he ordered a black belt a while later (He claimed he left it somewhere I don’t really remember, also I think this confirms your theory that he actually may have been a purple belt).

The sketchiness of that lead to 2 of my friends leaving the gym immediately after but, no no I trusted him so I stayed a while longer and trained almost everyday for about 2 more months and it started feeling really repetitive and I felt like I’d already learned everything he had to teach.

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At that point summer hit and I started working full time with the combination of lack of time and repetitiveness I decided to stop going during the summer although I did plan on going back once the summer ended solely because of the fact I considered Jay a friend and I should probably support him.

After seeing this video to my disappointment the assumptions I had were confirmed. It’s pathetic that he’d lie to his students that put in countless hours helping him with his gym. What he did was low and I mean real low I understand the honor of having a belt and what it means in BJJ and he completely disrespected it.

Not only that but he lied and took advantage of everyone’s trust. I decided it would be best that I delete the website I built for him because now I find it misleading (this is not an act of spite I just feel it’s in everyone’s best interest).

The thing I don’t get is he still has people supporting him.

[source : jiujitsutimes.com]