Lets just remind ourselves what the blades that we wear on our back (at Toronto BJJ) actually stand for...

Blade 1 Loyalty

Blade 2 Respect

Blade 3 Family

Blade 4 Attitude

Blade 5 Honour

Blade 6 Discipline

LOYATLY, RESPECT, FAMILY, ATTITUDE, HONOUR, DISCIPLINE

Why do I bring this up? It's because it is easy to forget that the patch is more than just something that cost $20 you put on your Gi. It's something each student should buy into. Something that each student should stand for.

I watched our Professor fighting a losing battle last night with a small handful of students in the crowd. Students of Professor Britto I ask you - where were you? Every class we heard about this event. Where was the loyalty, the family, the respect...where?

Jorge shows up to EVERY BJJ tournament and fights in our corners, fights the refs, travels out of his way to make sure he is there to support you when you compete. And last night, even after the promo video for the Score Fighting event said "There will likely be hundreds of Britto students there cheering him on", all we could muster was less than 30 of us all spread out in different parts of the arena. With out a doubt we were the SMALLEST sounding club at the event and this was right in our back yard. We couldn't even get 1 area to all sit in? It was pretty lame.

At the start of the 3rd round, even knowing he was not in a good position a bleeding Jorge Britto pumped his fists when he heard our small crowd chanting his name, but that wind he was lifted up on went quiet seconds later because there is only so much noise a handful of people can make.

The best thing about last night was the noise that the cheering squads for each local fighter were making. I was shocked at how few of Toronto BJJ showed up and that we were not in 1 area. The result was no cheering squad for the man who leads our team. No energy to give him and no noise to let him know we were there for him. We are an army, we are his soldiers and the lack of support from our academy last night was sad. Very sad. We can do better than that. And we should have.