Irelands first ever BJJ Black Belt

judomick

Huge congratulations to John Kavanagh who was awarded a well deserved Black Belt from SBG president Matt Thornton! great news for SBG Ireland and indeed bjj in Ireland, the first ever Irish BJJ Black Belt John Kavanagh!

dlofnep

Holy crap, brilliant!! Very well deserved!! John's BJJ is on another world, and anyone I've ever talk to said he's black belt level for a long time now.

Clive

Congrats John - well deserved!

spiral

congrats , well deserved:)

Kent Brockman

Fair play John- always wondered what someone would have to do to get a black belt having watched you as a brown belt, roll with lots of skilled ,bigger, stronger guys and appearing to handle them with ease! Well done:D

David Jones

Congrats Mate! Outstanding achievement. "Professaur Kaveenagh"

roo1981

Congrats indeed, nice one John, great day for Irish BJJ!!

That's awesome. Major congrats to John.

Valmont

Congratulations, thats great for John and the BJJ/Subwrestling/mma scene in Ireland:D

Nothingcompares

crazy monkey

JK rolled a blinder for the better part of an hour with opponents of all shapes and sizes and both genders - as always watching john roll is a pleasure and if ever there was a need for an incentive to train harder...what more could anyone ask - than to tap Ireland's first bjj black belt...;)

Well done coach

Im2Lazy

Big Congrats John!
Well deserved

JohnMc1

Congrats John.

ColinJennings

Congrats.

I've only trained with him once, but it was great fun and a great educational experience.

Millionaire

well done John! thats a great achievement!

Package

great news,,, congratulations john.

Taiwan-Evo

Congratulations ! Great achievment.

I have a question for you. Was it hard to improve your ground game being the highest ranking bjj practitioner in Ireland and not having someone to guide you or is brown belt more of just practicing what you already know?

HammerHeadGym

Fantastic John! Well done Indeed!

scuttery1

Well done JK

dent

Congrats and well done

StrateBlastJim

Nicely done, congrats john.

edit: And to Rowdy Owen Roddy for his purple.

weemate

well done John.....long overdue and well deserved.

Colm_OReilly

I'm sure JK will post at some point today with a groggy head thanking everyone.

Not to take away from John but Rowdy Owen Roddy was awarded his purple belt yesterday aswell. Well deserved in my opinion, Roddy is a fantastic roller, great coach and all round decent bloke.

columok

Congrats to El Rowdy and Senor Kavanagh. Good show chaps!

Darkwarrior

Congrats from Down Under to both John and Rowdy...

Legends, the pair o' ya!!!

Ciaran.

bella1

well done mate ,great news for sbg and ibjja to have our own black belt.well done again from all the guys at sbgnorthside..

debra.donovan

Congrats John on making Irish BJJ history!

Well done to Owen too!!

john kavanagh

thanks a lot lads

and big congrats to owen - well deserved

Celticfire

Fair play to ya. I know it takes a hell of a lot of dedication and training to get where you are now.

RealJohn

Huge congratulations to everyone who graded. You all did your clubs and your sport proud.

fergal_q

Well done John and Owen, very well deserved. Out of curiosity John-How many years did it take you to get the black?

Lou.m

WELL DONE:D

damo

Great achievment - bjj is only going to grow in ireland in the future, so you can chalk your name down in the history book now for sure.

john kavanagh

fergal_q wrote:

How many years did it take you to get the black?

only 10 years of 4-6 sessions per week

Nothingcompares

that'approximately 3900 hours.

52 * 5 * 1.5 * 10

:eek:

Unpossible

Well done John, it must have been tough trying to improve when you were (are) the best ing Ireland

Colm_OReilly

john kavanagh wrote:

only 10 years of 4-6 sessions per week

Would you do it all again?

john kavanagh

Colm_OReilly wrote:

Would you do it all again?

yes indeed. the destination sure is the journey!

as bj penn says i'm now a Black White belt, then it'll be Black Blue belt and so on - probably take about 10 years to get to Black Black belt. then of course you're a Black Black White belt....:)

Millionaire

john kavanagh wrote:

only 10 years of 4-6 sessions per week

Yes, thats great... love to hear about that sort of MA dedication.

And you said before in the early days you were sort of learning it yourself, when good instruction in grappling was not available as much in ireland?

That must be near 10 years when you used to have them adds in Irish Fighter for Full Circle MA, up in Rathfarnham.. thats some journey since then.

I m about to start my own full circle, after 6 months of putting it off, I am later this week starting to learn ground/grappling from an MMA guy based over here. No Gi stuff. Shooting for 2 x 90 min sessions a week. which will be really exciting to learn for me. (of course this goes on top of 5 -6 muay thai sessions a week... man where do I get the energy!)

TwoKingMick

Well done John and Roddy, you both now have even bigger targets painted on you backs!

Roper

john kavanagh wrote:

yes indeed. the destination sure is the journey!

as bj penn says i'm now a Black White belt, then it'll be Black Blue belt and so on - probably take about 10 years to get to Black Black belt. then of course you're a Black Black White belt....:)

Of course, this begs the question- how many stripes did you get on your black belt white belt?:D

Seriously, fantastic achievement especially to get so far as a mostly self coached individual. Also great news for the sport of BJJ in Ireland in general. If you check the grades thread you'll see theres now 100 blue belts! What a division that would be for the next BJJ open no? If you look down a lot of those you'll see that many have had their first taste of BJJ through John as well. So not only does John have amazing ground skills, hes also had a huge effect on BJJ in Ireland as well.

Liam_B

Well done John, congratulations. Well deserved. Same to you Owen, well done

john kavanagh

thanks again lads

still get caught in triangles though....

waterford mma

john kavanagh wrote:

thanks again lads

still get caught in triangles though....

lol. congrats john

dlofnep

john kavanagh wrote:

thanks again lads

still get caught in triangles though....

LOL!

john kavanagh

john kavanagh wrote:

thanks again lads

still get caught in triangles though....

LOL


Congratulations John.

john kavanagh

pic from the seminar

dogpit

Fantastic achievment,well done John from all at PCC

Nothingcompares

i like the pink gis.

john kavanagh

cheers davy

Ger Healy

Well done John excellent job