Francisco Mansor is one of a tiny handful of people outside the Gracie family to receive his BJJ black belt from Helio Gracie himself and he has inherited some of his strict standards for Jiu-Jitsu instructors. It’s something that has often been repeated about the older generations of practitioners, that they expected more than just technical proficiency from their black belts. To them, Jiu-Jitsu was more than just a sport or a martial art and it was supposed to be an all-encompassing way of life. As a result, they had standards for belt promotion that included how you conducted yourself off the mats as well as on it.
Mansor shared in a recent interview that one of his conditions is that an instructor shouldn’t be a smoker:
“You are the educator, you can’t forget that. You have to give an example because your students will follow you… Your students will do everything wrong that you do. I don’t accept a Jiu-Jitsu teacher who smokes.”
This will no doubt strike a nerve for some, as there are plenty of BJJ black belts and instructors in the modern era who smoke. Even of those who don’t, the vast majority of instructors wouldn’t think twice about promoting someone or hiring a coach who smokes. According to Mansor though, his instructor Helio Gracie actually had even higher standards and waited to promote him based on his use of something far more common:
“One day, Carlos (Gracie) asked Helio: “What are you waiting for to give the black belt to Mansor? Mansor has beaten everybody. And Helio replied: “Mansor drinks coffee”… It took me 15 years to receive my black belt. I entered the academy in 1955, and I only received it in 1970.”
The full interview with Francisco Mansor where he shares his standards for Jiu-Jitsu instructors was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Connect Cast:
