24-year-old grappling standout Danielle Kelly has been promoted to black belt by Karel “Silver Fox” Pravec.
The promotion doesn’t come as too great of a surprise to anyone who’s been following Kelly’s career. Kelly has been training for thirteen years, accumulating an impressive jiu-jitsu resume along the way. A few years ago, a video of her quickly dominating a young man in a competition went viral, and since then, she’s gone on to earn some serious hardware.
Kelly is an EBI veteran who says that the fact that she submitted three black belts in competition when she was a brown belt is one of her proudest accomplishments. She also won No-Gi Pans last year, and her most memorable win so far was her submission of UFC fighter Cynthia Calvillo at December’s Quintet Ultra, which only took her 17 seconds to achieve.
Kelly already has a major match set up in the next couple of months — she’ll be taking on Talita Alencar at Third Coast Grappling IV on March 14. Alencar will likely be Kelly’s biggest challenge yet, but based on what we’ve seen of this young rising star so far, we can expect an action-packed battle for the win.
