A newly promoted BJJ blue belt is currently recovering after undergoing a sudden disturbing transformation.
Chad, whose family requested we only use his first name, was just an ordinary white belt student a mere three months ago, with his coach saying that he was “pretty average in every way.”
“I mean, look. He was a white belt. A good white belt, but… a white belt,” confirmed one of Chad’s teammates. “Could he armbar an elderly woman? Probably. But that’s the highest vote of confidence I’d be willing to give him.”
In May, though, all that changed when Chad was promoted to blue belt after two years of training.
After a fairly standard social media post in which Chad called his promotion “the best moment of his life,” his teammates began to notice a shift in his tone online.
“I’m a shark, the ground is my ocean, and most people don’t even know how to swim,” read the student’s second post-promotion post, the caption accompanied by a photo of a shirtless Chad flexing in his gi pants.
At this point, Chad’s teammates weren’t alarmed. “A lot of students start to latch onto some sort of animal as, like, a coping mechanism when they get their blue belt and realize they have a target on their back,” explained Chad’s coach. “You know how kids will sleep with a stuffed animal? Like that, but for the adult ego.”
Two weeks later, though, Chad posted another photo, this time depicting a heavily photoshopped photo of a wolf with glowing green eyes rather than a photo of the grappler himself. “Throw me to the wolves, and I’ll return leading the pack,” the caption read.
“This should’ve been our first red flag,” said one of Chad’s purple belt training partners, Josiah. “But how were we supposed to know? He’s a new blue belt, for f***’s sake. They’re supposed to disappear. But looking back, it was an obvious cry for help. He was telling us about his —” Here, he shudders. “— transformation without us even realizing it.”
Indeed, three days later, Chad’s latest Instagram photo showed nothing but a sweaty white gi discarded on the floor alongside his new blue belt. “If size mattered, the elephant would be king of the jungle,” Chad had captioned the photo, punctuating the quote with a lion emoji. It was Chad’s coach who finally recognized the post for what it really was.
“He was abandoning his humanity, very literally shrugging off his human disguise,” she told the Jiu-Jitsu Times. “Did he truly see himself as a noble lion at that point, or was he aware of the monster he was becoming?”
Chad’s next post, shared a week later, was simply a blurry brown photo that was later censored by the social media platform when it was discovered that it depicted hair matted together with blood. “BEAR. GRIZZLY BIG BEAR. DANgER BEAR,” was written beneath it. At this point, three of Chad’s teammates raced to his house to check on their friend. What awaited them when they opened the door stopped them in their tracks.
“You know that scene in Fullmetal Alchemist? With… with the dog?” said Chad’s brown belt teammate, Jack, in a hushed tone. “He’s got a husky that looks just like it. Super cute. Met us at the door, licked all our faces.” After a moment, he added, “Now that I think about it, I’m surprised Chad didn’t eat it.”
Chad, as it turned out, was barely recognizable as anything that had once been human. Shaky cell phone video shared with the Jiu-Jitsu Times revealed a hulking beast crouched on all fours, a gray dorsal fin jutting out of a thick brown mane. Disproportionately giant paws with sharp, curved claws left the animal clumsy and stumbling, and as it lurched forward at the camera, a strangled sound that was something between a howl and a snarl erupted from its drooling maw. Thankfully, Josiah was able to step out of the way with ease.
“That’s when we knew,” he said, his face set and somber. “Chad’s takedowns are awful. It had to be him.”
Chad was subdued with a rear-naked choke and initially transported to a local hospital for treatment. “He’s a beast. An absolute animal,” said Jack. “Literally. In the ‘he was transferred to a very nice veterinary clinic’ way. Not the ‘he’s really good at jiu-jitsu’ way. Yeah. Not that.”
Thankfully, Chad’s prognosis is looking positive. He was transferred back to a human hospital last week, with his attending surgeon getting his patient’s permission to tell the Jiu-Jitsu Times via phone call today that Chad is looking and sounding more like himself every day. “His first words were, ‘When can I train again?’ His little karate program is very important to him. Don’t worry — just a few months, and he’ll be back to training UFC before you know it,” he said with a chuckle. The doctor’s statement was followed by a deep, snarling sound in the background before the line abruptly went dead. Repeated calls back to the hospital have not been returned.
The Jiu-Jitsu Times will provide updates to this story as they become available.
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