Travis Stevens is a BJJ and Judo black belt who competed as part of the US Olympic team several times during his career, even earning a silver medal in 2016. There are very few grapplers who have competed at such a high level in Judo while also having such an incredible understanding of BJJ as well. He didn’t just take up BJJ as a hobby either, as Stevens is a black belt under John Danaher and it only took him around 18 months to reach that rank. Stevens has also competed in BJJ as well, having had a handful of matches against elite opponents like Yuri Simoes and Rodolfo Vieira over the years.
There aren’t many people in the world who are in a better position than Travis Stevens to asses the comparison between professional BJJ and Olympic Judo, and he is surprisingly confident about how well top BJJ competitors could transition:
“Most of the people in Jiu-Jitsu that are competing at the highest level of Jiu-Jitsu, whether it’s gi or no gi, could make Team USA in LA. Right now. Just for argument’s sake, I could take Victor Hugo at heavyweight. I could probably grab like Nicky (Rodriguez) at 100s. You could probably grab, you know at this point it’s like arbitrary, but you could grab part of the B-Team, you could grab the Ruotolo brothers.”
It’s a bold claim of course, and many top Judo competitors in the US would probably disagree with his assessment. It’s also a theory that we’re not likely to ever see proven either, as there’s far more money to be made in BJJ than in Judo in the modern era. It’s not all that unbelievable though, as elite American grapplers like Nicky Rodriguez or the Ruotolo brothers are fantastic athletes with a wealth of competitive experience. Obviously they would need to adapt to the ruleset and change their styles of standing grappling, but it’s not impossible.
Travis Stevens himself is proof that the transition from Olympic Judo to competitive BJJ isn’t all that big, so it stands to reason that going the other way round is possible too. He also explained just why he thinks it could be possible:
“You’re taking like people who compete in the top 1% of their field in one area who are athletic, who have an understanding of strategy and winning in a competitive stance. By the time you show them a little bit of gripping and get them a little bit comfortable on their feet with like one or two throws, it’s all strategy at that point. It would be easy, piece of cake. They would show up to LA, they would get their gear, they would get their a** kicked, and then they would go home and they would all be Olympians. They’d go back to making dollars in Jiu-Jitsu. You could probably get all that done in like three years.”
The full interview with Travis Stevens where he talks about BJJ competitors potentially making the US Olympic Judo team was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of BJJ Fanatics:
