Josh Barnett has spent his career bouncing between the UFC heavyweight title and pro wrestling rings, but tucked into his resume is a piece of grappling trivia most competitors would never dream of pulling off.
Back in 2009, he entered the black belt division at the IBJJF No-Gi World Championships despite having no BJJ competition history, no lineage on file, and no black belt awarded by any instructor whatsoever.
And, well, he won it!
According to Barnett, the entire adventure began as nothing more than talking a friend into competing:
I did it on a whim too because I did it to get my buddy Victor Webster to compete.
Because he was acting and doing all this stuff and I’m like: “Bro, you are good enough that you could medal out here. You should go.”
Webster wasn’t going alone, though:
He goes: “I’ll do it if you’ll do it. And I’m, like, come on.”
So I’m already out here coaching people whatever. So I was like – fine.
From there, Barnett got himself added to the bracket on short notice, jumped off a flight straight from pro wrestling commitments in Japan, and showed up with barely any preparation behind him:
I flew in from doing pro wrestling in Japan and did, you know, did some working out and then showed up on Sunday and beat everybody.
The real oddity of it all was that Barnett had no actual rank in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to begin with:
The very next year, you get what I’ve heard called the “Barnett rule” in IBJJF.
So now you have to register your black belt and all that. Because I had no belt.
I was not a black belt under anyone.
I didn’t even come from jiu-jitsu. I didn’t train jiu-jitsu.
I just walked into the black belt division and just won it.
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