Jozef Chen has just been promoted to BJJ black belt by some of his training partners and fellow elite grapplers at B-Team Jiu-Jitsu. Although it might seem surprising that someone who has achieved as much as Chen wasn’t a black belt already, he is still only 20 years old. Not only is Chen a very young competitor but he’s also only been training in the sport for a little over 5 years. He found success incredibly quickly though, drawing attention with some impressive performances at ADCC Trials when he was still just 17 years old and only a few years into the sport.
His real breakthrough performance came slightly later, when he won the under 77kg division at the ADCC European, Middle-Eastern, and African Trials 2023. Not only did he have several good performances but they were against incredibly tough opposition, as he beat three ADCC veterans in one day. That was the weekend that saw Chen take his place the highest level of the sport and it has resulted in him getting multiple big matches over the next year. He has since competed for pretty much all of the biggest promotions in the sport like Polaris, Who’s Number One, and even ONE Championship.
Although he earned the right to compete at ADCC 2024, fans never actually got to see him take to stage there because he chose to take advantage of a different opportunity instead. Chen was one of several ADCC Trials winners who gave up their invites in order to compete in the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational. Chen went 1-1 in the under 80kg division and gave a great account of himself in one of the most stacked tournament brackets in BJJ history. Most recently he was seen representing Team Europe at Polaris 31, helping to secure the team a place in the Polaris Squads Intercontinental Championship 2025.
Ethan Crelinsten shared the news that Jozef Chen had been promoted to black belt in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
