Shay Montague is one of the most promising prospects competing out of the UK at the moment, and he’s just been promoted to black belt in BJJ. Montague has been one of the UK’s best-kept secrets for quite some time, as he’s been quietly working his way up through the colored belt divisions with a lot of success along the way. His time as a brown belt has been utterly dominant though, and he’s established himself as the best roosterweight competitor on the verge of breaking through to the highest levels of the sport.
Montague started out his brown belt campaign by winning the IBJJF no gi World Championship and although that was a great performance, it’s what came after that has been truly impressive. He has since gone on to win a gold medal in every single one of the major IBJJF events in the gi, putting in a series of impressive performances one after the other. The IBJJF Brazilian National Championship in particular is incredibly rare for any non-Brazilian competitor to win at any belt level, and still he managed to come away with a gold medal there in 2022.
Most recently, Montague completed his run at brown belt in IBJJF competition by winning the IBJJF World Championship in the gi and putting himself in a great position to challenge the stacked roosterweight division at the highest level. Montague has found success in both gi and no gi competition over the years, including winning the Grapplefest under 65kg title at Grapplefest 15. Montague has now become one of the top UK competitors and undoubtedly the top competitor from Scotland, so it’ll be interesting to see how he performs at black belt in the coming years.
Shay Montague announced the news that he had been promoted to black belt in BJJ in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
