Sandbagging is a term used in martial arts to denote a practitioner who competes at a skill-bracket deemed less rigorous than their actual level of competitive ability. The term is adopted similarly in golf and various forms of racing. In contrast to these sports however, it remains unclear whether the grappling “sandbagger” necessarily does so intentionally. For example, in Judo or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, where competition is generally divided by belt rank, a practitioner is conventionally not allowed to choose his or her own ranking and thus must compete at a level predetermined by his or her instructor.

This week at the Abu Dhabi World Pro a competitor from Khazakstan, Olzhas Nurtakanov from Mario Bros BJJ academy, competed as a white belt when he has been training wearing a blue belt Since late 2014. He ended up winning the white belt absolute and taking silver in his division.

Our friends from Pasandoguardia.com first broke the story (in Spanish).

Pictures from his Instagram show that he has wearing a blue belt from as far back as October 2014, and that he has been instructing children and even been competing with a blue belt (bottom left with medal):

Teaching kids BJJ:

Instagram post from October 2014:

BJJEE’s correspondant got a statement from his instructor Marat Kutzhanov (translated from Russian) by Pasha Stolyar:

“Hey Guys, please allow me to clear this situation up a bit. My student Nurtakanov Olzhas is not a blue belt, I am the only coloured belt in our entire city (purple). We don’t have many options to get promoted with our situation or even to attend the seminars. Due to financial difficulties we don’t have an opportunity to invite or visit any black belts to get promoted officially. Abu Dhabi Pro is the first high caliber tournament that we have ever attended.

I am 24 years old running my own gym, trying to spread BJJ in the town where people don’t know much about it. Olzhas has started to help me to teach the kids so I gave him my old blue belt, fully realizing that I have no right to grade him officially. It is normal in our local comps in Kazakhstan for blue and white belts to compete together. If you would ever visit us you would see that most of the guys have no gear to train in, old judo GI’s passed down from someone tied with belts of different colors (orange, yellow, blue, green, red and so forth from Sambo and Judo).

Olzhas was never officially graded as a blue belt, therefore we registered him as a white belt. Only after the tournament he was officially graded to blue by a real black belt. Olzhas is very happy to have competed and to have won such a prestigious tournament and more importantly to have received his “real” blue belt, but now everything has went “sideways” to the point where we have to hand the medals back over to the organisers. As a coach I totally accept this as my fault and I want to apologise to the BJJ community for this misunderstanding and I want to apologise to my student for this turning out the way it did…Marat Kutzhanov (purple belt Kazakhstan)”

The UAEJJF federation reacted by disqualifying the athlete and further actions are set to come.

Sandbagging prohibitions: Some officiating organizations attempt to proactively curb the occurrence of sandbagging. These actions range from simple rule restrictions, such as the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation prohibiting those with a Judo black belt from competing in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu white belt divisions, to organizations such as the North American Grappling Association employing a special tracking system designed to record competitors nationally and potentially re-assign them to a higher skill-level in NAGA events.