Nate Diaz’s pupil in jiujitsu tells a pretty funny story about an incident at the Nick Diaz Academy.
Ahead of Nate Diaz’s return at UFC 263 this weekend, one of his students shared a hilarious story that happened during one of the MMA star’s jiujitsu classes.
BJJ belt promotions from other gyms are typically respected and accepted when switching to other gyms, but there are somewhat rare instances of demotions happening in jiujitsu gyms too. This was apparently the case at The Nick Diaz Academy, but Nate handled it in a pretty funny manner.
Mikey Singh Hothi, who is now a BJJ brown belt under Diaz, shared the story which occurred years ago, back when he was still a white belt.
“Our Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym at Nick Diaz Academy is notorious for belts and how challenging it is to get one. A lot of people from other gyms were transferring over to ours because obviously they wanted to train with Nate and Nick. So we’d have a bunch of these blue belts from lesser gyms coming through, and (our gym was) kind of notorious for demoting them,” Hothi told ESPN.
“There were three of us white belts on the mat, and there were three blue belts from different gyms that were there. He had a white belt roll with each of the blue belts from the other gyms. And every single blue belt got tapped out by a white belt.
“Afterwards, he had everybody line up and he said, ‘OK, everybody take off your belts.’
“We all put our belts on the ground. I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is the moment I’m going to get my blue belt.’ I was really excited.”
Was this all an unorthodox and elaborate belt test that Nate conducted? A long awaited belt promotion for the three Diaz Academy white belts good enough to beat colored belts from other gyms? Well, Nate had other plans.
“(Nate) came over and picked up the three white belts that were on the ground and he gave them to the blue belts, like, ‘OK, you guys have gotta wear these now.’
“And he picked up the three blue belts on the ground, looked at us and was like, ‘You guys have to buy some new (white) belts’ and just walked off the mat.”