Travis Stevens is a Judo and BJJ black belt, and has proved his status as one of the best grapplers on the planet many times over on the international scene, culminating in a silver medal in Judo at the 2016 Olympic games. He is a long-time Judo practitioner and after taking up the sport early in his childhood, he managed to reach the highest level of competition for the very first time in 2008. In his first trip to the Olympic games that year, he lost to the eventual gold medalist Ole Bischof and had to return home without a medal.
He returned better than ever in 2012 although he was once again foiled by Bischof as he stormed to another gold medal. During his final attempt in 2016, Stevens had the best performance of his career and made it all the way to the final match against Khasan Khalmaurzaev, becoming only the third American in history to earn a silver medal in Judo at the Olympic games. For fans of BJJ, Travis Stevens is perhaps best known for the phenomenally short amount of time that it took him to reach black belt in the art.
It’s not as if this was pure luck either as Travis Stevens was awarded his BJJ black belt by a pair of legendary coaches in Renzo Gracie and John Danaher. He’s renowned for being an incredibly good grappler and has been sought out as a training partner by numerous athletes over the years, so it’s no surprise that he was able to progress through the ranks so quickly. It’s also no surprise to see him engaging in randori with the students at Saulo and Xande Ribeiro’s University of Jiu-Jitsu and comfortably defeating several grapplers one after the other. They should just feel lucky they didn’t meet him in competition!
The footage of Travis Stevens taking on an entire BJJ academy in randori was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Jiu Jitsu World:
