i really do not care for belts, but i do ask sometimes, because it is a quick gauge of skillset. but, you should work on getting promoted. why? because it is not fair to other judo guys you encounter, either in a competition or having a visitor to your club. i would never ‘go at it’ with a white belts and you don’t have time to explain your judo history with every new partner before you fight.
having said that, i don’t have a black belt. i have a perma-brown. yes, i am the shame of my sensei. he says there is no excuse to be a judo brown for 14 years. i have my reasons. and no, it’s not because i fucking believe that i gotta register myself to the police as a lethal weapon. fuck, i believed that for years when i was a kid. i hate the idea of belt color signifying credibility. i’ve met plenty of black belts, some high ranking ones, one godan in particular, who were fucking idiots in every sense of the word. belts mean shit. it doesn’t turn idiots into good people. matter of fact, it leads idiots into positions of power.
i was told something a few months ago, that did make me rethink my colour status… i tossed a pretty good bb, who also happened to outweigh me by 50lbs ish, and tower over me by 5-6 inches with sticky foot kosoto, and he was PISSED. he hasn’t looked at me straight in the eyes since. my sensei’s son told me that he wouldn’t have felt so bad, if i was a black belt, and that was fair and made sense. that comment made me feel like getting a black, but i don’t know… haven’t made up my mind. i don’t have the grading fee anyway, so it probably won’t happen anytime soon. and i also should be training, if i wanted to get a bb, which i haven’t been doing since Dec 31, 2009. i am sort of in a boycott mode, because of the new IJF rules, because my opinion really matters to the IJF. yep, right.