The IBJJF is the sport’s largest competition organisation and is the only one with restrictive rules on who can compete at the highest levels with only recognized black belts being able to compete, a class that Enson Inoue is apparently not a part of. Inoue revealed the news in a post on his official instagram account, in which he explained that he was awarded with his BJJ black belt courtesy of John Lewis, a little over two whole decades ago. His journey in Jiu-Jitsu began at the age of 21, all the way back in 1988 when he began the sport alongside his brother and fellow MMA fighter, Egan Inoue.
Despite his phenomenal time spent in the sport and his appearance in the very first ADCC Superfight, where he took on the organisation’s first ever double champion Mario Sperry for the title. That’s entirely separate from his lengthy MMA career of course, as Inoue is one of a small group of legends of Japanese MMA and was competing as early as 1995. Despite being born in Hawaii, Inoue only had one fight for the UFC where he won via Armbar and spent the majority of the rest of his career fighting under PRIDE or Shooto’s banner.
Enson Inoue explained in later posts that his main motivation behind seeking recognition from the IBJJF as a black belt, was purely so that his students could compete under his own banner and represent Purebred BJJ at any competition. The good news is that they can still compete thanks to an affiliation that his team have with BJJ United, although every coach would be unhappy to find that his students aren’t able to represent him personally of course.
Inoue isn’t the only person to suffer from the IBJJF’s overly restrictive rules either as the organisation has refused to recognize Dean Lister’s black belt and has completely banned the BJJ Globetrotters organization from being represented at any tournaments.
